Ireland must do its bit to tackle growing menace of transnational crime gangs
THE Gardai scored another major victory this week after they busted a Kinahan cartel drug-mixing factory.
It came as an international conference this week heard how transnational crime is constantly evolving and becoming more complex.
Junior Justice Minister James Browne told the EU-Middle East North Africa (MENA) conference in Lisbon that organised crime does not respect international borders.
A new Extradition Bill is currently making its way through the House of the Oireachtas in a bid to bring Ireland in line with the rest of Europe.
Senator and former Army Captain Tom Clonan told The Irish Sun on Sunday that the new legislation is vital in the battle against modern-day criminals.
I HAVE an abiding interest in transnational crime within the European area.
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The Garda Siochana is the primary intelligence agency within the State, although we have new emerging structures.
I am old enough to remember the advent of heroin with the Dunnes in Dublin.
That was the beginning of transnational crime and it is what the Garda Siochana referred to as “crime ordinary”.
Back in the day, crime ordinary was criminal activity that involved traditional housebreaking, public order offences and so on, whereas “crime special” referred to the activities of paramilitaries, subversives and other groups on this island.
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There was a clear distinction identified within the Garda Siochana between crime ordinary and crime special.
However, over the years, the drug trade has become more and more entrenched in the Republic and throughout the island.
People who would formerly have engaged in activities that were categorised as “crime ordinary” have come to be engaged in tactics and strategies that would be consistent with “crime special”.
Hence the extension of some of our legislation to cover organised crime gangs.
There is a very blurred distinction and, in reality, there is no distinction whatsoever.
The UN report on international terrorism states that organised crime and terrorism go hand in hand, and that is particularly so on this island.
Paramilitaries from the loyalist community, dissident republicans and so on cross over into the activities of organised crime gangs, including drug smuggling and people smuggling, and they will mobilise nationalist and loyalist rhetoric in order to screen their criminal activities.
Something they are interested in is us not having a seamless jurisdiction on this island or the type of inter-agency cooperation that would be supported by the European Arrest Warrant Bill.
It suits them to have a hard border on the island, although that is not something that anyone is contemplating.
They remain a serious and persistent threat to the security of the State.
IMPORTANT LEGISLATION
We’ve seen recent successes by the Garda and its partners in Spain and elsewhere in the arrests of senior figures in the Hutch and Kinahan extended gangs and their repatriation to Ireland.
This legislation is important.
I have been in this space since 1989.
Due to the rupture between me and the military authorities in 2000 following the publication of my research on the treatment of women within the Defence Forces, I have had to rely as a security analyst on international contacts to inform me about the defence intelligence and security situation, which I have been writing and publishing about for the past 22 years.
It is an interesting picture they paint. It differs to a certain extent from the concerns being raised in traditional Irish media, by which I mean the mainstream print and broadcast media.
My principal concern about transnational crime is that the main threat to the security of this State resides in elements that are active across the island.
Whatever happens on this island in the next ten to 15 years, we must have seamless cooperation across the jurisdictions.
We need to plan for the administration of justice, police intelligence and defence intelligence-gathering on the island.
The bill covers the European Arrest Warrant and agreements that have been agreed over the years within the EU.
But we must be careful that post-Brexit, we do not lose the cohesion and close cooperation that we need with those agencies and services in the UK to ensure that we can guarantee the security of our citizens, particularly in light of what may happen on this island in the next ten to 15 years.
Ireland has not been a net contributor of intelligence for quite some time.
One could call that a part of the peace dividend from the peace process.
