The Irish agency set up to seize the proceeds of crime was today visited by politicians from Northern Ireland examining ways of combating criminal and paramilitary activity in the province.
The SDLP's Alban Maginness, chairman of an ad-hoc Stormont committee on the proceeds of crime, led a delegation of Assembly members to the Criminal Assets Bureau's headquarters in Dublin.
The bureau, established in 1996 following the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin by a members of a criminal gang she was investigating, has the power to apply to seize suspected criminal assets even when no criminal convictions have been obtained.
Similar legislation is expected to be introduced in the UK within a year.
Mr Maginness said: "It is an intolerable situation where you know that people are involved in criminality, are enjoying the fruits of that criminality but there is nothing that is capable to be done in order to bring them to justice.
"So the best way of dealing with them is to deprive of the benefits of their criminality and that is what CAB does and has done so well."
He said there were 180 individuals identified by the RUC as living "lavish lifestyles" having benefited directly from crime but added these were "not exclusively or primarily paramilitaries".
He added: "The action that the state will use is by way of High Court action. That will protect the human rights of people in a situation where in fact their property and assets come under scrutiny.
"There was a RUC survey in Northern Ireland that identified 78 criminal gangs, about 44 of them were paramilitary gangs.
"There is a mixture of paramilitary and non-paramilitary crime - both are as offensive to the public and both will be tackled under this legislation."
The British government's Proceeds of Crime Bill has been drafted and is currently out to consultation, a process which finishes at the end of this month, a Home Office spokesman said. The Stormont committee will also report later this month.
Between 1996 and 1999 the CAB seized property, vehicles and cash worth up to £14 million, the gardaí said.
PA