Gardaí in Dundalk last night said they had dealt a major blow to what they suspect was the largest counterfeiting operation in the north-east and Border area.
They searched two premises and recovered sophisticated equipment used to produce a range of forged documents, including blank bank drafts, driving licences, insurance certificates, vehicle registration certificates and even utility bills.
A man in his 40s with a strong Republican background was arrested in relation to offences under the Theft and Forgery Act and a large number of documents and sophisticated computer equipment was recovered.
The man was last night being questioned by detectives in Dundalk about the operation. A large number of forged Northern Ireland driving licences and tax discs were also recovered. Gardaí will now investigate the destination of the forged items and whether the "customers" have criminal and/or subversive links.
Among the forged items were ESB bills and other documents which would be accepted as forms of identification when opening a bank account.
One garda said: "We recovered a massive volume of documents and a whole room in a house had been dedicated to producing these top quality duplicates." A number of passports were recovered and Garda technical and computer experts will examine them to determine if they were stolen or forged.
All the documents found were described as top quality and produced on state-of-the-art computers, printers, scanners and photocopiers. Those items alone are worth thousands of euro.
The searches were led by Det Insp Jim Sheridan of Dundalk. "This is certainly a very significant discovery, the volume of material involved is in itself significant and it is obvious that a lot of people from both sides of the border had availed of this," he said.