Garda strikes against crime gangs come at right time

On show yesterday were all strands of the Garda’s fight against organised crime, especially tackling the Kinahan crime cartel.

In Co Meath two Dubliners were arrested as cocaine and cannabis valued at €7 million was seized.

In the Netherlands, the network from which the Irish drugs were believed to have originated was hit hard by the local police.

Cocaine and cannabis valued, provisionally, at more than €10 million were discovered along with cash, computers and mobile phones. And at the lowest rung of the drugs trade, three other suspects were arrested in Dublin .

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The pictured that emerged on Thursday was one of a Garda force that is working well with its international partners to tackle cross-Border drug trafficking, which is flooding drugs on to the streets of Ireland and other EU nations.

Levels

Every level was covered: the large-scale wholesale operation in the Netherlands, the major consignment into Ireland, and even those low-level dealers who do the hand-to-hand deals with drug addicts and recreation users whose money funds the entire operation.

Assistant Commissioner John O’Driscoll was in The Hague and later Amsterdam. His presence there helped to co-ordinate Ireland’s contribution to the international operation and it also staked the Garda’s claim in its share of the international success.

The Garda is emerging from a period in which two commissioners left office abruptly and in troubled circumstances, not to mention the damage done by terminated penalty points and fabricated alcohol breath tests.

But its strikes against organised crime, and specifically the Kinahan gang, are coming so frequently now that public confidence is slowly being won back.

Sat back

O’Driscoll said that in the past the Garda may have sat back after successes against organised crime. But this time he said it would be different, because of the seamless international co-operation with other law enforcement agencies.

“I believe we will get on top of it, if we continue in this unrelenting manner,” he said of the Republic’s powerful organised crime gangs.

“Perhaps in the past when law enforcement agencies, not just in our jurisdiction but elsewhere, have achieved some success we sat back and thought that we’d dealt a blow.

“The only way to deal a blow to organised crime can be through ongoing law enforcement activity. And it adds a very significant dimension when the law enforcement agencies from a number of jurisdictions join together.

“(We) prevent the international dimension of the criminal activity operating with the ease it has done in the past.”