GARDAI in west Dublin have uncovered another significant cache of arms believed to belong to the drugs cartel that organised the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin last year.
The cache is understood to include four modern, high powered handguns and an east European copy of the American Ingrams submachinegun.
It is understood the weapons were found in a crypt in Mount Jerome Cemetery during a search operation on Tuesday afternoon.
The gardai were particularly pleased to recover the Ingrams submachinegun copy, known as an Agrams. This weapon has a 32 bullet magazine and a firing rate of more than 1,000 rounds a minute.
Another copy of the same weapon was found in another arms cache in the Jewish cemetery in Fairview last October.
It is believed the east European copies of the Ingrams came from Holland or Belgium. The sub machineguns are rare and, none was encountered before either in the Republic or in Northern Ireland. It is believed the weapons became available in the past 18 months as part of a flood of weapons on to the European black market following the decline in hostilities in former Yugoslavia.
The weapons found last year in the Jewish cemetery were hidden beneath a gravestone and are understood to have been the personal cache of the man who rode the motorcycle carrying the pill ion passenger gunman who shot Ms Guerin dead on June 26th last year.
The motorcycle rider left the State last summer when his role in the murder became known to the gardai. He has moved between Amsterdam, Gran Canaria and Spain in company with another west Dublin criminal who was heavily involved in heroin trafficking.
It is known that the drugs cartel that killed Ms Guerin had imported a significant number of weapons into the State in the year before her murder.
The Garda investigation into the murder has led to the recovery of more than 100 guns.
More than 200 people were arrested and questioned. Gardai from the Criminal Assets Bureau, acting on leads arising from the Guerin investigation, have also seized property worth as much as £3 million and either, seized or frozen cash accounts with an estimated, value of £1 million.
Senior Garda sources close to the Guerin investigation say, it has virtually led, to the destruction of organised crime in Dublin.
Aside from four murders attributed to personal vendettas among Dublin criminals there have been no organised gangland, murders in the city since the investigation began.