Fishing trawler nets €420,000 of cannabis off west coast

ANOTHER huge haul of drugs has been found off the west coast.

A trawler came across 60kg of cannabis resin while it was fishing yesterday morning.

The consignment has an estimated street value of around €420,000.

The find is causing concern among law enforcement agencies and may indicate a rise in trafficking along Ireland’s lengthy, and mainly unmonitored, coastline.

“The two bales of cannabis had been found by a Donegal-based fishing trawler while fishing off the west coast,” said Brian Smyth of Customs Drugs Law Enforcement.

“The bales had been very well wrapped and from their condition it is believed that they have been in the sea only for a short period.”

He said the skipper of the trawler immediately advised customs and gardaí. Customs officers then met the trawler on its return to port.

The spokesman said the find was relatively close to the area where 261kgs of cannabis resin was found on September 17 by another trawler fishing.

That haul, with a street value of €1.8m, was discovered by fishermen trawling the sea bed 160kms off the Aran Islands.

“On the face of it, and it is still early, it seems to be quite similar to the previous consignment in September. The drugs were found in and around a similar location,” said Mr Smyth.

“We are evaluating how they came to be there and we are having the drugs forensically tested, which may assist us.”

He said the mother ship may have intended to come back for the drugs haul, or a daughter ship, such as a yacht, may have been due to collect it.

He said it was also possible the ship got into trouble and someone dumped the drugs or got scared believing there was law enforcement activity in the area.

Mr Smyth pointed out that a customs cutter patrols the coast on a full-time basis, backed up by the Navy and Air Corps.

He said they relied on the vigilance of local people to report suspicious objects or activity to customs.

“Because of the size of our coastline, up to 3,000km, we rely to a large degree on local communities, those in maritime sphere, to assist us.

“That’s exactly what happened in this incident,” he said.

Last July, 12kg of cannabis resin, worth about €85,000 and believed to have been dumped 10 years ago, were found 96km off the Aran Islands. In the same month, 1.5 tonnes of cocaine, worth more than €100m, was washed up off the south-west coast. It was the single biggest haul of cocaine in the history of the State.

Mr Smyth said Ireland was one of seven states pooling intelligence and resources through the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre (Narcotics), which is based in Lisbon.

This agency is specifically aimed to interceptingcocaine and cannabis traffic across the Atlantic by sea.

He said the body had seized 10 tonnes of cocaine in 22 operations in the six months before it was officially launched in September.