Customs officers have confiscated almost 10 million cigarettes at Dublin Port, after a 10-day surveillance operation originating in Hong Kong.
The consignment, which had a retail value of £1.5 million including tax, is the second-largest cigarette seizure made in the State.
It arrived from China last week and is thought to have been destined for the UK. The 9.98 million cigarettes were branded Benson & Hedges, but this may have been a forgery, according to Customs sources.
They were concealed in pallets of chipboard and declared as chipboard in customs documentation. No arrests have been made, but inquiries are continuing at an international level, a Customs spokesman said.
The State's largest-ever seizure of cigarettes was in 1995, when 20 million were confiscated at Rosslare, with a retail value at that time of £2.6 million.
Meanwhile, gardai investigating Monday's theft of 5.8 million cigarettes from a freight train in Dunleer, Co Louth, said there is no evidence to suggest a paramilitary organisation was involved. It is now believed that a gang from the Louth-Meath area may have carried out the robbery for a Dublin-based criminal.
The modus operandi is almost identical to the attempted theft of cigarettes from another train on the same railway line about six years ago. No one was charged in connection with that crime, and gardai have not ruled out the possibility that the same people could have been involved in both incidents.
In each case a crane was hijacked and brought to a section of the Dublin-Belfast railway where an attempt was made to remove a container carrying cigarettes. However, in the earlier incident at Dromiskin, Dunleer, the crane was sited in a field adjacent to the railway track, and the gang had to abort the robbery when it started to sink. In this week's raid, the machine was placed on secure ground beside the track, and the gang escaped with the cigarettes, which are expected to fetch close to £500,000 on the black market.
Gardai confirmed that the raiders used two handguns and spoke with Dublin and Northern Ireland accents. The telephone call to Crane Hire Ltd in Dublin was made from Drogheda, supporting the theory that a gang based in the north-east planned and carried out the robbery. The container was found later near Slane, Co Meath, while the lorry used to carry it was found abandoned near Ardee, Co Louth.
The cigarettes came from the Carrolls factory in Dundalk and included a number of brands.