€500,000 worth of drugs found in Cork seizures

Gardaí in Cork have seized almost €500,000 worth of drugs in three raids which included the largest haul of heroin in the city to date.

Detectives from the Cork city divisional drugs squad recovered a kilo of heroin with a street value of €200,000 yesterday when they stopped and searched a car in Shanakiel on the city's north side.

They found another stash in a follow-up search of a house which was also in Shanakiel.

The driver of the car, a man in his 20s, was arrested under section 2 of the Drug Trafficking Act which allows gardaí detain suspects for up to seven days. He was brought to Gurranebraher Garda station where he was still being questioned late last night.

A Garda source said the seizure is the single largest heroin seizure in Cork and is more than all previous heroin seizures in the city over the past 10 years or so.

Unlike Dublin, Cork escaped the scourge of heroin in the 1980s and 1990s with most drug users opting for cannabis or ecstasy. Over the past three or four years, though, cocaine use has increased dramatically in the city. In the past 12 months, gardaí have begun seizing heroin but the amounts remain relatively small.

Meanwhile, gardaí in Ballincollig recovered a significant quantity of ecstasy after they were alerted by a man walking his dog who discovered what turned out to be 20,000 ecstasy tablets worth €200,000.

The drugs were stashed in a black refuse sack in undergrowth in Carriganarra. It is thought they had been hidden for collection later. No one has been arrested.

In another drugs case, gardaí are to send a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions after releasing without charge a man in his 60s who was arrested in the Blackpool area of Cork's north side late on Wednesday night following the discovery of €35,000 worth of cannabis resin.

Some seven kilos of the drug were found by gardaí during a search of a house in Blackpool.