Drug gangs feel 'confident' their shipments will get through, according to EU drugs agency

Investigators are examining if the same mothership searched in Cork, the MV Matthew, was involved in previous drop-offs that were seized before the failed attempt in Ireland. Picture: Denis Minihane

Cocaine seizures of the size intercepted in Irish waters this week are happening “frequently” across Europe, an expert in the EU’s drugs agency has said.

The 2.25 tonnes of cocaine seized inside a “mothership” container vessel is the biggest haul of the drug in Ireland, exceeding the 1.5 tonne seizures in 2007 and 2008.

Laurent Laniel, attached to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), said the rise in cocaine trafficking into Europe indicated that “traffickers feel confident” that most of their shipments will get through.

The principal scientific analyst for drug markets and crime at the agency said “motherships”, like the one apprehended off the Cork coast, are not caught as often as containers of cocaine in ports, as gangs try to stay out of national waters to avoid being caught.

"The seizure in Ireland, looking at it from a European point of view, it is a large seizure, but those multi-tonne or two-tonne seizures are happening quite frequently now," Mr Laniel said.

He said the amount of cocaine being supplied into Europe has “probably” increased even further this year and that this was on the back of successive years of record hauls.

He told the Irish Examiner there were a range of factors driving the increase of trafficking into Europe:

• Production of cocaine (as estimated by the UN) reached record highs in 2021, approaching 2,000 tonnes of pure cocaine;
• Europe is the fastest-expanding market worldwide at the moment;
• More gangs are able to buy directly at source countries and in nearby transit countries;
• More gangs are competing nationally to distribute cocaine on a wholesale basis;
• There is a continuing pool of people willing, or coerced, to risk “life and limb, and their freedom” to get involved in the drugs trade;
• Profits from cocaine trafficking are greater than other drugs.
  Mr Laniel said the sheer money to be made from cocaine is revealed in draft estimates on the value of the cocaine market just produced for the EMCDDA.

This shows that cocaine generates €200m more than the cannabis market.

This is despite there being an estimated 22.6m cannabis users, as opposed to 3.7m cocaine users.

“So, six times less people are generating €200m more,” Mr Laniel said.

He said 300 tonnes of cocaine were seized in the EU in 2021, a record amount, and that the EMCDDA estimate 177 tonnes of cocaine were used by consumers in that year.

Investigators are examining if the same mothership was involved in previous drop-offs that were seized before the failed attempt in Ireland.

This includes a 2.4 tonne haul of cocaine by the French navy off the coast of west Africa and a one-tonne seizure by Spanish authorities off the coast of Cape Verde.