The Air Corps could be used to help in the extradition of Daniel Kinahan from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly.
The commissioner said he could not comment directly on Kinahan’s case “for operational reasons” but spoke generally on the force’s processes for transporting high-profile prisoners.
He said calling upon the Air Corps in such cases is a “routine and well-established practice” and is among the measures generally available to Garda.
Kinahan (48), the leader of the Kinahan cartel and part of the European “super cartel” involved in the drug trade, is in custody in Dubai.
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He was arrested as part of a secret joint operation between the Garda and authorities in UAE on foot of an extradition request from the Irish authorities and it is understood he will face charges in Ireland.
Sources previously told The Irish Times that Kinahan would be the most significant organised crime figure the State’s criminal justice system has dealt with.
Kelly said An Garda Síochána generally uses several measures when it comes to extraditions and high-profile prisoner movements, with risk assessments carried out for every case and a different approach taken based on the level of risk.
One of these options, he said, is calling upon the Air Corps.
“Sometimes we look to the ‘aid to the civil powers’ and look to our colleagues in the Air Corps to assist us,” he said, referring to the mechanism that enables the gardaí to request military support.
“That is a routine and well-established practice.”
Asked specifically whether the Defence Forces could be called upon to transport Kinahan, he did not comment directly but noted that if there are “any high-profile prisoner that we have to bring back from anywhere in the next couple of months, we will risk assess every one of them”.
Kelly said there are “different ways” the gardaí can approach such extraditions. “It is a well-worn path,” he said, noting the force has “good, well-established processes” in place around such transports.
Sean McGovern, a member of the Kinahan cartel, was extradited using an Air Corps plane last year.
Kelly was speaking at the graduation of a class of 193 new gardaí from the Garda College, Templemore, Co Tipperary.
The cohort of 134 men and 59 women join the ranks of An Garda Síochána as probationer gardaí. They will be assigned to Garda divisions across the State, the majority − 141 graduates – in the Dublin metropolitan region (DMR). The others will be split across the southern region (14); eastern region (27) and the northwestern region (11).
Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said 2026 is “slightly unusual to other years” due to the EU presidency in the latter half of the year, leading to an increased allocation of new gardaí to the capital.
“Towards the end of the year,” he said, “we’ll see certainly more people going to rural areas”.
Among those headed for Dublin, the commissioner said 57 will be assigned to DMR North, the Garda division encompassing Ballymun.
Asked about a recent incident in which a gun thrown away by a man attempting to evade gardaí was picked up and fired by an 11-year-old child, Kelly said this staffing assignment was “putting significant additional resources into that area”.
He said that gardaí had, on the same day as the incident, found a separate weapon: “On that very same morning, we conducted an operation with the divisional drugs unit out in Ballymun and we recovered a firearm.”
He said the incident “could have had absolutely tragic outcomes, and thank goodness it did not”.
Also speaking at the ceremony, O’Callaghan commended the Garda response to the incident Ballymun. He described the incident as “an extremely worrying development”.
