The Revenue Commissioners Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Unit has received an award from Britain-based Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG).
The director general of ACG Mr John Anderson said the unit had "improved its effectiveness from routine to exemplary".
The award was accepted by Mr Shay Doyle who manages the IPR unit. In the first six months of 2002, the Irish unit made 55 seizures of counterfeit goods with a total value of almost €2 million. About 95 million counterfeit and pirated articles were intercepted at the external borders of the European Union in 2001. Their value on the legal market is estimated at over €2 billion.