THE search of a Colombian ship at Moneypoint, Co Clare, resumes this morning when a marine engineer will be brought on board to identify hiding places for drugs.
Yesterday, 30 kg of cocaine - the State's largest cocaine find - were found in the ship's ceiling. The engineer is familiar with the ship's construction and gardai and customs officers hope he can direct them towards more hidden compartments.
Depending on its purity, the drugs could have a street value of £3 to £6 million.
Front Guider, the Swedish-owned but Singapore-registered ship, arrived from Colombia with coal for the ESB power station at Moneypoint yesterday morning.
It had been shadowed by the naval vessel LE Ciara since it entered Irish waters on Tuesday. When it docked at 7 a.m. gardai, naval officers and 26 customs officers boarded and began a search, with navy divers examining the ship's underside.
The 250-metre vessel has a crew of 28, mainly Filipinos and Colombians. Some were questioned yesterday but as yet there have been no arrests.
The largest previous cocaine find was a 20 kg bale washed up on the beach at Fanore, west Clare.
. An Irishman was among three people detained by Spanish police last night after a yacht with cannabis worth about £12 million was seized near Benidorm, in southeast Spain.
The 39-year-old man was said by Spanish police to have been part of the three-man crew aboard the 10-metre Andoni which was seized at the Isla de Altea, north of Benidorm. The other two men were a Moroccan and a 32-year-old Briton.
Police said the yacht had been travelling without lights on Tuesday morning, and was picked up on the radar of a police vessel. The yacht would not stop when challenged and police gave chase, seizing the vessel at dawn and finding numerous 30 kg packs of cannabis which "filled almost the entire boat".