THE new Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, has said he is "confident" the major drug dealers can be brought to justice. Mr Byrne said crime was "a serious problem, but we don't have a crisis yet".
He said he did not think the Garda needed to re-establish its murder squad, which was disbanded in the 1980s.
"I don't intend at this stage bringing back the murder squad as it was in the past," he said. But he added that the way serious crime was investigated would continue to he reviewed.
Mr Byrne said he had been reading about the Government's proposed new legislation in the newspapers and thought it would be "a help to us".
Measures to get at drug dealers' assets were "a step in the right direction", he said.
Following suggestions that there was a limited armed Garda presence on the Border due to lacks of resources, Mr Byrne told RTE he was "quite happy at the moment with the resources we have deployed to meet the threat" from loyalist paramilitaries or the IRA.