Reports circulating of a rogue batch of high-strength heroin in Cork following the recent drug-related deaths of two homeless people have been discounted after tests found nothing unusual in samples tested.

The heroin linked to three deaths in Cork and Dublin is “normal” and not a rogue “super-strength” batch of the drug, tests show.

More than €95m worth of drugs have been seized so far this year — similar to seizure levels during the peak of the drug trade in the Celtic Tiger years.

Gardaí have seen a “huge increase” in demand for ecstasy this year on the back of a surge in the production of high-quality MDMA in Europe.

WHEN gardaí in Wexford got a call from the skipper of the Willie B on April 3, 2010, they knew who was the man for the job.

THE biggest haul of heroin so far this year was made on Tuesday night when gardaí raided two houses in west Dublin.

The first group of specialist nurses qualified to forensically examine victims of rape graduated today.

THE number of drug users prosecuted in the courts has risen sharply over recent years.

A man who raped and murdered a schoolgirl and left her to drown on a remote Connemara beach, today failed in his bid to have an appeal against his conviction heard by the Supreme Court.

IRISH researchers have been ranked among the world’s best in terms of the impact of their work on immunology.

JOE O’Reilly claimed his wife Rachel was reported to social services over her behaviour towards the couple’s two young sons in the months before she was murdered.

THE Court of Criminal Appeal has rejected an application by Connemara man John “Demesne” McDonagh, aged 33, to have new evidence included as part of the appeal against his conviction for the murder and rape of schoolgirl Siobhan Hynes in 1998.

A MAN has begun his appeal against his conviction for the murder of a schoolgirl on a remote beach near Carraroe, Co Galway, in December 1998.

A man charged with rape who has discharged his legal team and is defending himself, has told a jury he has been set up by gardaí because he "made a laugh of them" in a trial in 2000.

The risk of a chance match or a mistake in the DNA evidence against accused man John Crerar is too high to rely on it to convict him of murder, his lawyer told a jury today.

DNA taken from the body of Phyllis Murphy - the young Kildare woman found raped and strangled in Co Wicklow over 22 years ago - matched DNA taken from John Crerar, the former army sergeant on trial for her murder, a jury has heard.

ANTI-DRUG campaigners and medical experts here and abroad yesterday rejected claims that ecstasy was not as dangerous as had been believed.

Cocaine is fast becoming the drug of choice in Ireland. Cormac O'Keeffe charts the rise of a drug that was once the preserve of the rich and famous

A British forensics expert has suggested that the manner in which forensic evidence in a rape and murder trial was collected prior to testing in the State Forensic Science Laboratory could have left it open to tampering or contamination.

There was an estimated chance of around one in 650,000 million that a DNA profile matching a Cork man accused of rape and murder matched someone else, a forensic scientist said today.

DNA samples from an 18-year-old Cork man on trial for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Co Cork park matched samples found in her body, a jury has heard.