Guerin remembered 10 years after her murder

Murdered crime reporter Veronica Guerin was remembered this evening at a ceremony to mark the tenth year of her killing.

Ms Guerin was gunned down on the outskirts of Dublin after mounting a high-profile campaign against Ireland's drug barons in a national newspaper. As she sat in her car at a traffic light near Newland's Cross on the Naas Road, she was shot by a pillion passenger on a motorbike.

Veronica Guerin

A minute's silence was held at the spot where she died at 7.30pm.

Friends and relatives gathered in west Dublin with the Guerin family and members of the public to remember the slain journalist.

Flowers were laid at plaque marking the place where Ms Guerin was shot dead by associates of Dublin crime gang leader John Gilligan.

A journalist with the Sunday Independent, Ms Guerin was one of the country's leading crime reporters when she was killed.

The killing was the first assassination of a reporter in the Republic and sparked shock and anger among colleagues and the public, and gardaí vowed to track down her killers.

The criminal investigation was one of the largest in the State's history and led to over 150 arrests. Brian Meehan was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Paul Ward was also convicted and sentenced to life in prison in November 1998, but this conviction was later overturned on appeal.

Drugs baron John Gilligan was extradited from England in February 2000. He was tried and acquitted of her murder but was convicted of importing cannabis and sentenced to 28 years in prison, which was reduced to 20 years on appeal.

Speaking in response to questions prompted by Ms Guerin's anniversary earlier today, Veronica Guerin, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell insisted that despite the rise in gangland murders, the battle ahd not been lost.

Mr McDowell said the Garda had record resources and has organised itself to address the "constant threat" of gangs and drug dealers.

He described the weekend seizure of heroin worth up to €8 million in Dublin as significant. "This vast amount of heroin is an enormous breakthrough. It would have been flooded into the Irish market and into the veins of young people by these thugs," he said.

The gangs importing such huge amounts of drugs were "hellbent on destruction, not only of the kids using the drugs but of anybody who gets in their way."

Mr McDowell said he did not accept that modern gangs were more dangerous than before. The Gilligan gang was "equally" ruthless ten years ago.

"I don't accept that things are better or worse than ten years ago," he said. "They are equally savage and equally merciless with each other. We should be under no illusions about that."

Additional reporting: PA