Father and daughter arrested over €500,000 cocaine haul

A FATHER and his daughter were among three people in custody last night following a €500,000 cocaine seizure in Cork.

Yesterday’s dawn raid on an isolated rented house in Leamlara, south of Rathcormac, was the latest in a series of almost 40 raids mounted as part of a garda crackdown sparked by the cocaine-related death of a man in Rathcormac six weeks ago.

The drugs were discovered at around 7am after detectives from Fermoy Garda Station, backed up officers from Midleton and Cobh, and a sniffer dog, swooped on the bungalow in the townland of Dundullerick.

The drugs were found on the premises. Three people in the house at the time — a man in his 40s, his 19-year-old daughter and one of her female friends about the same age — were arrested under the provisions of drug trafficking legislation, which allows gardaí detain them for up to seven days.

Gardaí said they were acting on information supplied following the death of Pádraig (Paudge) O’Keeffe, 19, in June. The young man’s body was found on a road near his home just hours after he attended a house party in Rathcormac.

Cocaine was readily available at the party and it is believed that Mr O’Keeffe’s death was cocaine-related.

Gardaí issued several appeals for information in the days after his death. The 40 raids on properties across north Cork since netted several thousand euro worth of cocaine and cannabis.

Several files are being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Chief Superintendent Mick McGarry said the house raided yesterday had been under surveillance for several weeks.

“It is one of a number in the area that we are monitoring as a result of the information we received. We are delighted with the co-operation we have received from the public in recent weeks,” he said.

“We sought information from the community and the response has been tremendous. It allows us to focus our attention on specific areas and not just trawl large areas. We are acting on all of the information we receive and if there are people out there with concerns for family members in relation to drugs, they can be assured that we will act in the strictest confidence.

“Thankfully this stuff is off the streets ahead of the bank holiday weekend.”

Several gardaí were drafted in after yesterday’s raid to conduct follow-up searches of surrounding fields and woodland.