How did one Dublin crime gang replace another at the apex of Ireland’s drugs trade without a feud or even a single shot being fired? It’s a scenario that would have been unthinkable less than 10 years ago.
But then the Regency Hotel attack of 2016 happened and its unpredictable consequences changed everything in the Irish gangland world.
This week on the side of a motorway in Co Kilkenny drugs brought into the country as part of The Family crime gang’s activities were seized by the Garda. A truck was stopped and a secret compartment, controlled by hydraulics, was discovered. It was stuffed with cocaine; some 152kg, valued at an estimated €10.6 million.
It was the latest in a series of major busts linked to the group.
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The Family gang first cornered the heroin trade in Ballyfermot, Dublin, more than two decades ago. It is led by a group of men, including brothers from Ballyfermot, in their 40s. While they have previously been named in the media, they cannot be identified at present for legal reasons.
They have been well known to gardaí since the 1990s and some have served lengthy prison sentences in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe for their role in previous multimillion-euro drug deals.
But The Family has come up in the underworld of late. It is now the new dominant player on the Irish drugs scene, which was once monopolised by the Kinahans and their Dublin-based underlings.
Though The Family has for many years run a large drugs business – and has previously been involved in gun violence – its dominance in Irish gangland arrived thick and fast during the pandemic.
Their names cropped up again and again when major consignments of drugs – usually of a size associated with the Kinahan network – were being found.
Most significant was the discovery of €4 million in cash during a Garda drugs operation quickly followed by confirmation The Family owned the money, not the Kinahan group.
It would have been unthinkable at any juncture since the cocaine boom began in the Republic 25 years ago that anyone apart from the Kinahans could gather that much money from drug dealing. It was no coincidence that as The Family was riding high, the Kinahans' Irish operation – the “Byrne organised crime group” based in Crumlin, Dublin – was being wiped out.
So how did it happen?
All roads lead back to The Regency, and the attack that led to the downfall of the Byrne group.
During the daring attack at the north Dublin hotel in February 2016 that horrified the public, men dressed in mock Garda uniforms brandishing AK47s assault rifles burst into a boxing tournament weigh-in packed with fight fans. They were looking for Daniel Kinahan (47), seeking to murder him in revenge for the shooting dead of Gary Hutch (34) in Spain the previous September.
Kinahan managed to escape to safety, but one of his associates, David Byrne (33), was shot dead in the attack. Byrne was a brother of Liam Byrne (44), who ran the Byrne organised crime group.
Kinahan – the son of Kinahan cartel founder Christy Kinahan – and Liam Byrne had to hit back hard. The responding campaign of gun violence was so extreme it would show the underworld, at home and abroad, what happens when you come at the kings. That campaign became known as the Kinahan-Hutch feud. In truth, it was a Kinahan-Byrne wipeout of the Hutch group rather than a “feud”.
When it ended two-and-a-half years later, up to 18 murders had been linked to the dispute. But as the feud progressed, the Garda response to the violence was ramped up. And it was the Byrne group, the Kinahans' Irish operation rather than its now Dubai-based leadership, that paid the price.
Liam Byrne was forced to flee the Republic, first for the UK and then Dubai, as his Dublin home on Raleigh Square in Crumlin was seized. A car garage he and his gang members used as a money laundering front was put out of business by the Criminal Assets Bureau, with its fleet of vehicles seized.
The Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (DOCB) managed to get one step ahead of many of the Kinahan-Byrne planned attacks on the Hutch side, foiling them and bringing serious criminal charges against the protagonists.
Everyone was targeted; from murderers caught on the way to planned killings to getaway drivers and those who had supplied the stolen cars or simply bought the burner phones and other items needed to plan a gangland murder.
In total, more than 70 people were jailed in Ireland over the Kinahan-Hutch feud. The Garda’s wiping out of the Byrne gang in Ireland was largely complete by the time the pandemic began.
All the while, The Family gang was continuing to import its drugs consignments through its international suppliers. As is the case in the legitimate economy, once the dominant player in any sector is under pressure, and ultimately collapses, one of entities in the tier just below will reach up and take top spot.
For his part, Daniel Kinahan had by 2020 outgrown the Irish drugs scene. He was based in Dubai and was – and still is – a leading member of the European super cartel, which controls around one-third of the cocaine that comes into Europe. Because of his elevated position, finding a replacement for the Byrne group, to retain an iron grip on the Irish drugs trade, was not a priority.
And as he had assumed such a senior position in the European drugs trade, huge quantities of cocaine that ended up on the streets of Ireland were passing through the hands of the super cartel he co-leads.
Those two factors – the demise of the Byrne group and the Kinahans having outgrown the need to control distribution in Ireland – represented two planets aligning for The Family. But there was a third factor.
As the Garda clampdown on the Kinahan-Hutch feuding criminals was so effective, other major Irish gangs looked on and digested what was happening. The Garda’s DOCB had sent to prison so many of the Byrne network for gun killings or attempted murders, other gangs were dissuaded from embarking on gangland hits.
“People saw that no matter what role they played in an organised crime group, we were coming after them, and they were going to get a lengthy prison sentence,” Assistant Commissioner Angela Willis, head of Organised and Serious Crime in the Garda, told The Irish Times last week.
“I think the others [gangs] realised there was going to be too much attention involved in killings, so the killing stopped. They pulled back and they realised murder wasn’t the way to achieve success from their perspective.”
The guns in the underworld have fallen silent over the last five years; there have been just one or two murders a year, down from up to 20 a year witnessed in the not-too-distant past.
And it has been during this rare period of calm that The Family became the very biggest drugs gang in the country.
Now, some of The Family’s key players face serious charges, meaning they have sustained serious damage in recent years that may soon result in significant jail time.
However long The Family members remain on top for, one thing is certain: others will eventually seek to take their place.
The underworld will continue to replenish with new names and new faces.
