The Kinahan gang involved in an ongoing criminal feud are "enemies of the Republic", a memorial for journalist Veronica Guerin was told on Thursday, 20 years after her murder.
Addressing a gathering of family and media at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle, BBC reporter Fergal Keane said despite the passage of time "drug lords are still killing" and threats against journalists continue.
“A society which watches hardened criminals create private armies is not a safe society. It is not a society that has paid heed to the memory of Veronica Guerin,” he said.
Ms Guerin was in her car at a set of traffic lights on the Naas Road in Dublin on June 26th, 1996, when two men on a motorcycle pulled up beside her and one of them opened fire. The shooting followed her endeavours at exposing the workings of the Irish criminal underworld.
While recent commentary has focused on the state of organised crime in Ireland two decades later, Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald told the commemorative event the targeting of journalists would not be tolerated.
“In Ireland we regard an attack on journalists as an attack on the State itself and any attack will be met with the full wrath of the State, as happened in the aftermath of Veronica’s death,” she said.
The Garda and government of the day realised a line had been crossed, Ms Fitzgerald said.
One of the most high-profile murders in the history of the State, it led to the prompt formation of the Criminal Assets Bureau, the Garda organisation targeting the wealth of organised crime.
The memorial ceremony, hosted by Ms Guerin's employer, Independent News & Media, received a message from President Michael D Higgins, who said the country owed her an "enormous debt of gratitude".
Brian Meehan (47), from Crumlin, is serving a life sentence in Portlaoise prison for her murder having being convicted by the Special Criminal Court in July 1999.
