All Northern paramilitaries are up to their necks in lucrative crime, according to the latest report from the North's Organised Crime Task Force.
And even if the paramilitaries go out of business those involved in crime won't "return to nine-to-five jobs", says the PSNI.
Publishing its report yesterday the task force detailed the kind of activities in which the paramilitaries and "ordinary" criminals are engaged. It ranges from £10 "party packs" that drug-dealers are selling to young people to multi-million-pound laundering of diesel fuel.
Mr Sam Kincaid, head of the PSNI's crime operations, said it still cost a lot of money for the paramilitaries to fund their organisations, and most of this funding came from crime.
Two years ago the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee estimated that it cost about £5 million to run the republican and loyalist groupings, which had the capacity to raise £18 million annually.
Representatives from bodies such as the PSNI, Customs and Excise and the Assets Recovery Agency, which come under the umbrella of the task force that tries to manage a multi-agency assault on organised crime, were on hand to provide some insight into the operations of the 235 criminal gangs, of which more than 150 have links to paramilitaries.
The "party packs" are simple affairs, explained an officer from the PSNI drugs squad.
They are plastic bags containing a condom, an ecstasy tablet, some cannabis and "downers" to help revellers the morning after return to planet earth.
"They are very popular in the night clubs," he explained.
That was on the lower profitability end of the criminal scale of activity, but it was apparent yesterday that wherever a pound is to be made there are organised gangs to exploit the opportunities.
The scale of the crime is huge and includes drug-dealing, tobacco and oils fraud, counterfeiting, vehicle theft, armed robberies, loan-sharking, extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, computer crime and illegal gambling.
Sometimes it is as ingenious as it is dangerous.
For example, as a spokesman for the task force explained, a new fraud is making brake pads for cars out of grass.
"The grass is compressed and then painted to look like the real thing. I wouldn't fancy driving a car where I was depending on them," he commented.
The criminal fraternity in Northern Ireland is large judging by the fact that in the drugs area alone 1,500 people were arrested last year. Drugs valued at £12.5 million were seized, but many more millions of pounds worth of drugs got through.
On display were cricket bats hollowed out to contain heroin and cannabis, beer cans that contained cocaine worth £250,000 and a petrol tank that secreted six kilos of ecstasy worth £250,000.
Loyalist organisations such as the UDA, the Loyalist Volunteer Force and to a lesser degree the UVF are involved in drugs crime, as is the INLA, according to the task force report.
Mr Kincaid said the LVF was heavily engaged in drugs and that last year in one operation directed against the organisation in Lurgan police seized cocaine worth £1 million.
The task force also found evidence of "snakehead" involvement in illegal immigration of Chinese people.
Virtually all organisations including the IRA were involved in counterfeiting of goods worth more than £150 million annually, the task force reported.
Illicit whiskey and vodka, videos and fake sports and designer clothing and perfume were on display yesterday. Let the buyer beware because, the spokesman said, some of the perfume was stabilised with urine.
Customs and Excise traced and smashed a "vodka" production operation in Co Tyrone after they discovered, in a sort of criminal Freudian slip, that the word "quality" on the labels on the bottles was incorrectly spelt.
High-quality counterfeiting of money is a particular problem in Northern Ireland. Life is made easier for the counterfeiters because, due to the number of local and other banks with their own £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes, there are 51 different notes in circulation. England and Wales generally have just Bank of England notes to deal with.
A huge €50 note counterfeiting plant was discovered in Co Antrim, whose sophistication was illustrated by the fact that shortly after production the notes were found in 13 European countries, further highlighting the international links to organised crime in Northern Ireland.
The Assets Recovery Agency, similar to the Criminal Assets Bureau in the Republic, seized more than £1 million in assets and froze another £3 million last year.
Task force spokespeople conceded that the so-called "Mr Bigs" who run the North's 85 "top-level" gangs were adept at ensuring that the chain of evidence that could put them behind bars did not reach them, and that it was the smaller fry who were more likely to be caught.
