Drug trade powder keg: How Ireland became a significant player in international drugs trade
It has become crystal clear in recent days that Ireland is not just a player on global drug trafficking routes because of the Kinahan connection. File picture
The past week has been proof – if it was needed – that Ireland is a significant player in the international drugs trade.
For many that unwanted tag has in no small way been thanks to the actions of the Kinahan Organised Crime Group, which has climbed to the top of the global drugs trade over the past decade.
But it has become crystal clear in recent days that Ireland is not just a player on global drug trafficking routes because of the Kinahan connection.
The seizure of €32.8 million of crystal meth in the Port of Cork on February 16 shows the links are far wider spreading out to the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, with massive seizure en route to Australia when it was seized in Cork.
Fast forward four days and another transnational operation, involving law enforcement officers in Ireland, Lithuania and Britain became public knowledge.
As part of that European investigation into an organised criminal gang, two people were arrested and close to €40,000 in cash had been seized in Ireland.
At the end of last year, over 2,2 tonnes of cocaine was seized off the coast of Ireland. With a street value of at least €157m, it was the largest seizure in the history of the State.
While investigations are ongoing, gardai believe that the drugs shipment appeared to have originated from a “murderous” South American cartel.
The second largest drugs haul was the aborted mission to land 1.575 tonnes of cocaine into west Cork in 2007.
In the lead-up to that operation which ended in the waters of Dunlough Bay, local links to west Cork by members of a drug trafficking gang based in the UK had helped suss out the west Cork area before the plot was set in motion.
Now, it appears that Kerry links to the infamous Sinaloa cartel in Mexico could have been laying the groundwork to use Ireland as a staging post en route from South America to Australia, where there is a booming and lucrative market for crystal meth.
In recent weeks, a 78-year-old Canadian national was given a 12-year jail sentence in Victoria after attempting to smuggle 18.55kg of crystal meth in through Melbourne airport shoeboxes.
The haul had an estimated street value of more than $17 million (€10 million), according to Australian police.
The discovery of crystal meth in a container in the Port of Cork last week is very similar to a large discovery in Australia in August 2022 when almost 1,800kgs of the drug were found in containers in a port in Sydney. The seizure was the country’s largest.
A ruling in Chile last November in relation to two people convicted of a plot to smuggle cocaine into Europe featured references to encrypted communications accessed by investigators which showed that Dublin Port was being considered as a destination site for Sinaloa cartel activities because of links to an Irish Mexican citizen who had spent many years in the southwest of Ireland.
Several infiltrated encrypted phone messages between him and other gang members noted references to Dublin in plans by the cartel to target ports in Europe. Others mentioned included Rotterdam, Antwerp, Valencia and Liverpool.
But it is not just the local links to the cartel which put Ireland at the forefront of such an operation.
Former Assistant Garda Commissioner Pat Leahy explains: “Geographically speaking, we could now be considered as the front door and the back door into the European Union and we just happen to be an island in the north Atlantic and are potentially the first stop for anything arriving from the west, even if it is just in transit.
Dr Leahy says the cartels are looking all the time for new routes.
"They have a business-orientation. They treat drug smuggling and the transportation of large shipments as normal business so they are adopting some normal business rules in terms of looking at the supply chain.
"They are looking at potential new supply routes all the time, they are looking at the most effective routes that they can have for themselves, so they are moving around and they are engaged in environmental-scanning all the time to identify opportunities.
"They are looking at the availability of ports and the security mechanisms in place to prevent and/or detect criminal activity, they are looking at a country’s capacity to prevent and/or to respond in this space, and they are constantly determining which place presents a new opportunity as they appear on the radar of existing countries/ports.
"When security interventions are successful, they know that countries are going to enhance their resources, enhance their capacity to prevent criminality – through enhanced intelligence, tracking, technology and ultimately responding.
"They then have to start thinking about where to go next, what route to use and which ports to test.”
Dr Leahy points out that international cartels will be aware of Ireland’s difficulties regarding resources to respond on the sea or in the air or on the ground.
“There has been significant public discourse (and reports) about our capacity to respond or prevent as a country. It is available internationally and it has appeared again in the international papers only very recently.
"And we really have to consider if this is appropriate, that is, identifying our internal security challenges publicly, as this only educates those intent on exploiting any security gaps or challenges.”
It is not just from a drugs perspective that international hackles have been raised about Ireland’s security gaps.
Shortly before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, there was concern when the Russian navy held military exercises off the southwest coast, above the densest concentration of undersea communications cables linking North America and Europe.
Just earlier this month, the UK think tank Policy Exchange published a report which labelled Ireland as engaging in “persistent security freeloading” when it comes to defending Europe.
Independent TD and retired soldier Cathal Berry says he was on an exercise with the Navy in 2007 during which the organisation had the capability to put eight ships to sea.
“Now, they can put one normally, perhaps two with a push. The capability which was already very weak has been further diminished in the last 15 years really. It gives out all the wrong signals.
"We know that Ireland’s maritime responsibility are eight times larger than Ireland’s land mass so we need to have assets out there. It is very clear now that drug cartels recognise that Ireland is a weak link and they are taking full advantage of that.
A quarter of a billion euro worth of naval ships are tied up in Cork Harbour that can’t go to sea. We have the hard bit right as in we have the hardware. It is keeping our people that is letting us down.”
He acknowledges that there has been some moves to address concerns by Navy personnel but believes there is some time yet before the flow of sailors can be stemmed.
“There has been improvements from January 1 in offshore allowances finally, after five years of begging for it. But unfortunately, people have made commitments to new employers to it will take a few months for that to wash through the system but we need to improve pay as well for our technical specialists.”
Dr Leahy feels though that despite the challenges, Ireland has done well in achieving success in tackling drug trafficking.
“We have shown as a state and as a nation that we can collaborate really well and really effectively at home between local, regional and national services, across all agencies and this is really positive.
"We have also shown that we can collaborate really effectively at international level and this is evidenced in recent successful interdictions which require significant long-term planning and intelligence sharing at international levels.”
He says the events of the past week have also shown that a focus on named major operators in the global drug trade, such as the Kinahan organised crime group, is pointless, as such groups will always exist.
"That is fully understandable – it is an island on the north Atlantic. It is the front and back door into the European Union.
"It has the capacity to somewhat legitimise, or temper the eye of suspicion on cargo which now may appear to be leaving the EU to go somewhere else, for example, in this case, their decision to stop here on their way to Australia.”
The use of Ireland as a gateway into a large market like the European Union or Australia is not the only reason why international cartels focus on here – Ireland also has a vibrant drugs market despite its size.
Last year, a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that Ireland is ranked fourth in the world for its use of cocaine – behind Australia, Spain and the Netherlands.
Dr Leahy said those statistics should be a lightning bolt for us.
"The only reason it was moving from Ireland to Australia is because of the profit deferential which was quite significant with an estimated value of approximately €34m in Ireland to a possible €160m in Australia for the same cargo.”
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