Customs officers have seized €500,000 in cash from an Irishman who was about to get on a flight to Brussels and, in unconnected operations, contraband tobacco worth more than €80,000 was seized in Cork and Dundalk.

An Oireachtas dommittee wrote to the justice minister in March 2013 highlighting the need to tackle the huge increase in illegal cigarette smuggling.

Cigarettes containing high levels of asbestos, lead, arsenic, traces of rat poison and human excrement are flooding Ireland as dissidents and highly organised crime gangs make vast profits buying them for as little as 20c a packet.

Customs officers have seized 88,000 cigarettes and 69kg of roll your own tobacco in Dublin’s north inner city.