THE Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, has said her “top priority” is to ensure Gardaí in Limerick and the wider Mid West region are resourced enough to dismantle gangs involved in flooding the country with cocaine and other harmful illegal drugs.
The Minster, speaking through a spokesman, said that Gardaí collaborating with international police agencies was “key” in trying stamp out the drugs scourge from the Shannon Estuary and the country’s surrounding coastline.
Ms McEntee’s hard line on drugs comes in the wake of a seizure of €21m worth of cocaine onboard a cargo ship at Foynes Port.
Ms McEntee was commenting in response to criticism of her and the government from local Independent councillor Emmett O’Brien, who said his warnings since 2018 about supply levels of cocaine along the estuary had been “ignored” by the Minister and the government, that the Gardaí and the naval services had been under-resourced.
Cllr O’Brien also hit out that Minister McEntee had treated rank and file Gardaí with “compete disregard”.
The councillor made his comments as Revenue Customs Services officers and Gardaí were searching the Verila, a Maltese-flagged bulk cargo ship at Foynes Port, following the record drug seizure in County Limerick.
“Tackling drug dealing and associated criminal activity, including by organised crime groups, is a top priority for An Garda Síochána and the Government,” said a spokesman on behalf of Minister McEntee.
“It is a priority for An Garda Síochána to disrupt and dismantle organised crime gangs and drug dealing operations, and to remove illegal drugs from circulation,” he said.
The representative said that the seizure in Foynes “is an example of this in action and Minister McEntee would like to thank An Garda Síochána and Revenue for their work in stopping this large shipment of cocaine reaching communities in the Mid West and beyond.”
“This follows one of the biggest ever seizures of drugs in Ireland off the south east coast back in September and An Garda Síochána are consistently making smaller seizures all over the country every day.”
He said Minister McEntee was “committed to ensuring An Garda Síochána have the resources they need to tackle all drug crime”.
“This is reflected in the unprecedented allocation of €2.3billion in Budget 2024 to allow for sustained investment in recruitment, technology and equipment.”
“The record budgetary resources allocated to An Garda Síochána in recent years have enabled the Garda Commissioner to assign extra resources to the specialist units involved in tackling organised crime, including the Armed Support Unit, GNDOCB, the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).”
Minister McEntee’s spokesman said the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau “leads in tackling all forms of drug trafficking and the supply of illicit drugs in Ireland”, but he continued that “given the global nature of the drugs trade, collaboration at an inter-agency and international level is key to tackling this issue”.
“An Garda Síochána has strong and strategic partnerships in place at international level targeting drug trafficking, including working closely with relevant law enforcement agencies such as INTERPOL and Europol and participating in the Maritime Analysis Operations Centre for Narcotics (MAOC-N) based in Lisbon.”
Last September a record cocaine haul was seized when the Panama-flagged MV Matthew ship was intercepted off the coast of County Cork by the LÉ William Butler Yeats naval ship, assisted by Army Ranger personnel.
When the vessel was searched, 2,253kg of cocaine, worth €157 million, the largest cocaine seizure by weight in Irish history, was discovered.
