More than a million cigarettes seized at Dublin Port

Revenue officers have seized 1.5 million Benson and Hedges cigarettes at Dublin Port this morning.

The cigarettes are valued at €555,00 and the potential loss to the revenue is put at €450,000.

The cigarettes were concealed in seven leaded crates of glass which arrived in a container from Valencia, Spain. The crates had been carefully constructed with a lead-liner inner crate to conceal the cigarettes.

A spokesperson for Revenue Customs service said: "Considerable work went into this concealment, the glass was used to disperse x-rays from the container scanner and lead was used to avoid detection by x-ray.

"However the container scanner we use is powerful enough to provide an image that raised our suspicions and when the container was stripped the cigarettes were discovered."

The cigarettes will be shredded and disposed of in an environmentally

friendly manner.