Two people were being questioned by gardaí last night in connection with the seizure in Cork yesterday of cocaine with an estimated street value of €1.4 million.
It was by far the biggest seizure of the drug so far this year and followed an intelligence gathering operation led by the Garda National Drugs Unit and involving police from three other jurisdictions.
A haul of 20kg of the drug was found expertly concealed in the body of a foreign-registered car carrying two Polish nationals when gardaí stopped it in the South Mall area of Cork city early yesterday afternoon.
Detectives are checking records at the Republic's main ports to determine if the drugs were driven into the country from mainland Europe.
Most of the cocaine entering the Republic in recent years has originated in Spain and has been driven into Ireland through the ports via car ferries.
Couriers generally pack the doors and other hollow panels of their cars with the drugs.
The Polish nationals, a man in his 40s and a woman in her 30s, were taken to Togher Garda station. They were being held there last night under the Drug Trafficking Act. It is understood they were travelling with a small child. They had been in Ireland for a short time and stayed in a Cork city hotel.
Yesterday's operation involved gardaí from the Cork Divisional Drugs Unit and Dublin-based Garda National Drug Unit. The intelligence gathering operation took more than three months and involved the PSNI and police forces in Scotland and Holland.
Gardaí believe the drugs were destined for the Irish market and that most, if not all, was destined for use in the Munster area, particularly Cork and Limerick cities.
Yesterday's seizure followed the seizure of seven kilos of cocaine in Cork last month. That haul, worth an estimated €500,000, was found during a search of a premises in the Timoleague area on April 19th. A quantity of cannabis was also found during that operation.
Last Friday gardaí seized another €500,000 worth of cocaine in Tallaght, Dublin. Six firearms, including two sawn-off shotguns, three rifles, a handgun and a quantity of ammunition were also found during the same search.
