ANALYSIS:IN THE space of just 12 hours between Monday night and yesterday morning, gardaí arrested members of two of Dublin's main crime gangs as they seized drugs worth almost €3 million and more than €100,000 in cash.
The seizures have been welcomed by the Government and Opposition, who congratulated the Garda on a job well done.
The €2 million-plus seizure of cannabis in Rathcoole, Co Dublin, targeted a key gang operating mainly in Clondalkin, west Dublin. The gang is slowly becoming as problematic for the Garda as the gangs in Crumlin and Drimnagh and other outfits in Finglas and Limerick.
Three people were arrested during the Rathcoole seizure on Monday night, including the Clondalkin gang leader.
This arrest, coupled with the high value of the drugs seized, is a major blow to one of the country’s biggest gangs.
The €420,000 Swords haul has been linked to one of the feuding drugs gangs in Crumlin and Drimnagh. Their drugs turf war with a rival gang has cost 12 lives.
Taking a large haul of their drugs out of their hands, and arresting gang members is a major blow to their group.
The Garda operations were clearly based on accurate intelligence. The execution of the arrests and seizures reflect surveillance and planning of the highest order.
The Minister of State with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy, John Curran, said: “Every week the Garda are making significant impacts into criminal activity that involves drug trafficking and serious gangland crimes.”
But the uncomfortable truth is that the seizures will most likely have no impact on the price or availability of drugs.
A number of years ago there were two heroin seizures in the space of a fortnight. One was valued at just under €10 million and one just over €10 million. Senior Garda officers at the time told The Irish Times the record seizures had no impact on the price or availability of street heroin. That is a measure of how big the illicit drugs industry – and it is an industry – has become.
The seizure in rural Co Roscommon yesterday of drugs worth €80,000 is proof, if it were needed, of a thriving drugs market right across Ireland. Annual drug seizure totals are now regularly well over €100 million, and that excludes major shipments seized in Ireland or Irish waters destined for the UK or European markets.
Yesterday Fine Gael’s justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan pointed to other areas away from policing where the State needed to make more progress. “It is still far too easy to smuggle drugs into the country,” he said, while congratulating gardaí on the latest seizures. Shipments arrive through small airports, which rarely see a Customs officer due to under-resourcing; via the vastly under-patrolled coastline, which is guarded by just one patrol boat; or through our ports, all of which share a single X-ray container scanner between them.”
The Government was more interested in the “headline grabbing” that came with large drug seizures rather than doing more to prevent the shipments getting into the country in the first place, he said.
