A CANNABIS-GROWING facility found by gardaí in Co Meath was being readied to produce a crop valued at €1.4 million every eight weeks and is both the largest and most sophisticated operation of its kind ever found in the State.
Senior Garda sources said the premises were in the process of being doubled in size and when fully constructed would have been capable of producing a cannabis crop every eight weeks with a street value of €1.4 million.
“This was an industrial-sized operation in the true sense,” said one Garda source.
The discovery was made at Bective near Trim in Co Meath on Wednesday afternoon.
Some 1,720 plants valued at €680,000 were found growing on the premises.
A timber-framed extension was being added to the warehouse that would have doubled the floor size and enabled the simultaneous cultivation of just under 3,500 cannabis plants.
An examination of the warehouse and farm has revealed the Irish gang behind the operation was using techniques never seen in the Republic before.
Rows of high-wattage lights needed to generate sufficient light and heat to grow the cannabis crop had been attached to generators designed to kick in and ensure the crop continued to grow in the event of a power cut.
The warehouse walls and doors had been covered in a specialist spray-on insulation to maintain high levels of heat in the warehouse.
An irrigation system had also been put in place to feed the plants with large quantities of water, all mixed with chemicals to aid the plants’ growth and increase the potency of the drug they produced.
The five men arrested at the scene on Wednesday are aged 40, 43, 37, 32 and 60 years. They have all been detained under section 2 of the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act.
Three of the men gave addresses in Co Meath and the other two are from Cabra, Dublin.
They were taken to Kells and Navan Garda stations where they were still being questioned last night.
It is understood some of the suspects, none of whom are well-known criminals, will appear before the courts as early as today.
The arrest of Irish people at a cannabis-growing facility is highly unusual.
The number of finds of cannabis crops has increased significantly here in the last two years but almost all of those have been controlled by Asian gangs and most of the suspects arrested have been Vietnamese.
The Asian gangs began using the Republic as a cannabis-growing base more often just over two years ago after they were detected growing crops in Britain and Northern Ireland.
Wednesday’s raid and arrests operation followed an intelligence-led Garda investigation involving periods of surveillance on a number of suspects and on the premises targeted.
The operation was led by members of the Garda National Drugs Unit with members of the Meath detective and drugs units.
It was the latest raid under the national drug unit’s Operation Nitrogen, which was established to investigate gangs behind the increasing number of cannabis cultivation operations found in the Republic.