Ireland’s Coastline: Stories from our sea frontier
New and emerging threats, from climate change to security in a more politically volatile world, put greater focus on Ireland’s island status and our coastline.
Stretching to more than 7,500km, the coast of Ireland’s mainland and offshore islands covers roughly the same distance across Africa at its widest point, or the path of a flight from New York to Moscow.
That distance creates challenges when it comes to policing a long coastline such as Co Cork’s against drug traffickers.
Elsewhere, rising sea waters and changing weather patterns pose risks to existing homes and businesses situated next to the sea, including along the Co Wexford coast.
The coastline is also a vital resource for the tourism and leisure industries, bringing value to the local economies of the 19 counties that touch the Atlantic Ocean, the Irish Sea and the Celtic Sea.
In this series, The Irish Times looks at lives and lifestyles around the country’s coastline along with the challenges facing some on the island’s sea frontier.
The sun sparkles silver on the water and a white sailed speck makes its way across a calm blue sea.
It was not always as peaceful and quiet in the most far-flung corner of west Cork.
On the shore, Paddy O’Sullivan and Kieran Cotter reminisce about the day when this corner of the island was the scene of one of the country’s biggest ever drugs seizures.
Located at the tip of Mizen Head, Dunlough Bay is one of the most remote parts of Ireland.
It was cast into the media spotlight in July 2007 when the best laid plans of a UK drugs gang came undone and €440 million worth of cocaine was recovered from the wash by the Irish authorities.
O’Sullivan, now retired from his role as a senior customs enforcement officer, says the gang had intended to land 1.5 tonnes of cocaine at a more sheltered cove in Dunmanus Bay but their Rib (rigid inflatable boat) ran out of fuel and they were left at the mercy of the waves.
“Their plan was to land the drugs at a pier in Dunmanus Bay but a combination of lumpy seas and the fact they underestimated how much fuel they needed for the engines on their Rib meant they ran out of fuel and were driven into Dunlough Bay instead and they ended up in the sea with the drugs,” says O’Sullivan.
Cotter, who spent 45 years with Baltimore RNLI lifeboat and on the day was coxswain of the all-weather vessel, the Hilda Jarrett, thought they were heading out to rescue sea anglers in difficulty only to discover the anglers were drug smugglers.
“We went out thinking we were looking for a man at sea, and we searched south of the Mizen but then we went up to Dunlough Bay, and we ended up hauling the drugs from the sea while the Castletownbere RNLI lifeboat Annette Hutton picked up the fellow who was in the water,” says Cotter.
Ireland’s Coastline: Stories from our sea frontier
New and emerging threats, from climate change to security in a more politically volatile world, put greater focus on Ireland’s island status and our coastline.
Stretching to more than 7,500km, the coast of Ireland’s mainland and offshore islands covers roughly the same distance across Africa at its widest point, or the path of a flight from New York to Moscow.
That distance creates challenges when it comes to policing a long coastline such as Co Cork’s against drug traffickers.
Elsewhere, rising sea waters and changing weather patterns pose risks to existing homes and businesses situated next to the sea, including along the Co Wexford coast.
The coastline is also a vital resource for the tourism and leisure industries, bringing value to the local economies of the 19 counties that touch the Atlantic Ocean, the Irish Sea and the Celtic Sea.
In this series, The Irish Times looks at lives and lifestyles around the country’s coastline along with the challenges facing some on the island’s sea frontier.
In all, some 62 bales of cocaine with a street value of €440 million were recovered and four men were arrested in a joint operation involving the Garda, Customs and the Naval Service in one of the most dramatic drug seizures in Irish waters.
Four Britons – Martin Wanden, who was plucked from the sea, Perry Wharrie, Joe Daly and Gerard O’Hagan – were sentenced at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to jail terms ranging from 10 years to 30 years over the seizure.
West Cork is a popular spot for drug smugglers. The 1,200 km of coastline in the county, stretching from Ardgroom on the Beara Peninsula to Youghal in east Cork, offers plenty of opportunities for smugglers to land their contraband.
The first major drug seizure was back in 1991 when customs officers found 28 bales of cannabis worth €9 million aboard the yacht, the Karma, at Courtmacsherry and led to Cork antiques dealer Christopher “Golly” O’Connell being sentenced to eight years in prison.
In 1998, customs officers found 325kg of cocaine worth €61 million when they searched the catamaran Gemeos in Kinsale harbour.
A year later the converted fishing vessel, the Posidonia, was escorted by the Naval Service into Schull with €18 million worth of cannabis on board.
With cocaine becoming the drug of choice in Europe, gardaí, customs and the Naval Service had further success off west Cork when they seized cocaine worth €400 million on the yacht Dances with Waves in 2008 and cocaine worth €300 million on the yacht Makayabella in 2014.
More recently in 2023, the bulk carrier, the MV Matthew was boarded by Army Rangers off Ballycotton in east Cork and €157 million worth of cocaine was seized.
O’Sullivan credits Ireland joining the Lisbon-based Maritime Operations Analysis Centre (Narcotics) – the multi-EU member state initiative known as MOAC(N) involving the Garda and Customs- as an important advance as intelligence on drugs is shared internationally that enables the Irish authorities to act promptly, bringing successful seizures.
O’Sullivan says that typically back in the 1990s and 2000s, cocaine would be shipped across the Atlantic from South America in a yacht or catamaran and when it reached European waters, a smaller vessel would go out to meet it and collect the drugs in an operation called “coopering”.
In more recent years, gangs have moved away from using yachts, preferring freighters and bulk carriers to ship drugs to Europe with the consignments being dropped off in the shipping lanes and marked with an electronic beacon for collection by gang members in smaller craft.
While the nature of drug smuggling off west Cork has changed, the geography hasn’t.
It remains the first land transatlantic traffickers meet after their crossing. With the serrated nature of the coastline, smugglers are spoilt for choice when looking for quiet, isolated landing spots.
All along the Beara, Sheep’s Head and Mizen peninsulas are where such inlets abound. Even on the less jagged coast from the Baltimore Beacon at the eastern side of Roaringwater Bay, all the way east to Crosshaven at the mouth of Cork harbour, there are many secluded spots to land drugs discretely.
The Dunlough Bay seizure back in 2007 was a classic example of a crime gang using Ireland to land drugs. The father of Daly, one of the men sentenced for the drugs seizure, was from Bantry. Daly had holidayed there since childhood, so few suspicions were aroused when he arrived with friends on a fishing holiday.
But, according to Det Insp Joe Young of the Cork County Divisional Drugs Squad, drug gangs can today often book an Airbnb in an area without arousing too much suspicion, while improvements in communication technology makes it easier to rendezvous with traffickers at sea.
O’Sullivan agrees, pointing out that while Ribs have been around since the second World War, they are being used more and more by drug smuggling gangs as bigger and more efficient engines have increased their range and enabled them to get to drop-off points faster.
“Everything is Rib-related; if you take a cargo vessel outside and they dump it off at a given point, you mark it and you follow your track out in your Rib and retrieve it and you don’t have to land it at a pier, you can drive the Rib up on to the beach if the tide is coming,” he says.
For Cotter, the prevalence of Ribs has made it harder in some respects for the authorities to catch drug smugglers. He suggests that while west Cork is peppered with quiet coves, gangs might well be focusing on busier spots where seafarers using Ribs are the norm.
“Big Ribs are so commonplace now nobody bats an eye lid and I would think the busier the place, the better, in that you are less likely to draw suspicion whereas if you bring a Rib into a quiet inlet and you send down a truck down there to collect your drugs, that will be noticed,” he says.
“But if you bring a Rib into Baltimore or Schull or Crookhaven or up in Kinsale or Crosshaven, places where you could have hundreds of Ribs in the summer months, nobody will pay too much attention and you have trucks going down to these places all the time doing deliveries.”
Young acknowledges European law enforcement face a huge challenge to combat the transatlantic trade in cocaine and west Cork is no different.
The move to container ships means the season no longer runs from May to September as was the case when gangs were using yachts to ship the drugs.
Young says organised crime groups are regularly changing how they operate and a clampdown on containers in the big European ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp is forcing them to look for alternative supply routes.
“We are still the gateway to Europe and west Cork is the pinch point for drug ships going up the English Channel,” he says.
“But we still have two huge things in our favour; we are marking 30 years of Coastwatch this year and the first is the vigilance and alertness of people in communities in west Cork that are obviously observant and they know what’s unusual or suspicious and that should not be underestimated.
“What also should not be underestimated is the benefit of having gardaí living and working in those rural communities where people know and trust them and will talk to them.
“We probably take that a bit for granted but that trust in the police isn’t the case everywhere and we need to utilise it fully.”