The difficulties faced by gardai in bringing the main figures in the drug dealing trade to justice were highlighted in Sligo this week when a man who pleaded guilty to possessing the first seizure of cocaine in the town told a court he was too afraid to name the dealer for whom he was working.
The 24-year-old man, who said he first experimented with drugs at the age of 12 and agreed to act as a "runner" for the main dealer only because he was in debt from his drug habit, was given five months to prove to the Circuit Court judge that he was serious about giving up drugs.
"If by May he has earned a suspended sentence, he will get it, if not, he won't," Judge Anthony Kennedy said of the man, who had no previous convictions before being found in possession of £16,000 worth of ecstasy and cocaine.
Drugs with a street value of more than £1 million destined for Sligo have been seized in the past six months. A number of people have been arrested and charged but gardai have yet to pin down the main figures. The assertion by the 24-year-old man that he feared for both his own safety and that of his family if he gave names was not challenged by the gardai, who accepted that "with the way things are going at the moment on the drugs scene, that could follow".
However, gardai have notched up a number of significant successes against the drugs trade in Sligo. Ten days before Christmas a Sligo man was arrested in Holyhead, Wales, in possession of £500,000 worth of cannabis. He has been charged and is in custody.
In August, a haul of cannabis and ecstasy worth £500,000 was found in a flat in the village of Tubbercurry. Six arrests were made and two men have been charged and are in custody. Close links have now developed between the Drugs Unit in Sligo, the national unit in Dublin and police in London and in north Wales.
It is known that the drugs are coming from Europe, through London and then Ireland. When the Sligo man was arrested in Holyhead travelling under a false name, gardai in Sligo helped identify him.
It is accepted that those caught carrying the drugs are not the ones making the big money from the trade. Gardai estimate that the drugs seized in Holyhead with a street value of £500,000 would have cost the main dealer only about £100,000, and they also believe that the cost of such a loss would be split among a number of leading players.
Both large hauls are believed to have been destined not just for Sligo town but for a wider area in the north-west.
Supt John Fitzgerald said the seizures in Tubbercurry and Holyhead were very significant. "Firstly, the dealers are being pinched because they are losing money and also successes like this mean we are taking people out of the scene," he said.
Supt Fitzgerald said, however, that there were a number of "different layers of pushers who had built their lives around this activity locally" and that dealers could constantly change the people and the channels they used for transporting drugs.