Cavan and Monaghan Drug Units set-up ‘imminent’ - top cop

The establishment of new and dedicated garda drug units for both Cavan and Monaghan is “imminent”.

Interviews were completed just before the new year and, arising from those, two units will be set up - one for each county - comprising of one sergeant and four gardaí.

“We had a competition. There was a huge appetite for it. We had a lot of applicants,” explained Chief Superintendent for the region, Alan McGovern.

Speaking to the Celt at the 2024 Cross Border Police Conference on Organised & Serious Crime at Cavan's Farnham Estate last week, he took time to heap praise on the efforts to all gardaí in Cavan-Monaghan involved in investigating and helping take down drug trading locally.

“We've had a lot of successes in Cavan and in Monaghan in the area of drugs, particularly around growhouses,” said Chief Supt McGovern, noting two seizures with a combined value of more than half a million just before Christmas.

They include the discovery of 19.1kgs of herbal cannabis worth €382,000 in Cavan Town, and two men arrested after 244 cannabis plants, valued at over €195,000, following searches in Arva in November, as well as other smaller but nonetheless significant seizures in Monaghan.

“We have identified a need, in collaboration with the local community about what they require, for a drugs unit here. Every guard is a community guard, and every guard is involved in the detection of crime - drugs or otherwise. But we acknowledge that, if you have specialists in a specific area, it does give more focus to it, nationally, and it's the same when you drill down into a county and community levels of any organisation. The guards are no different.”

The unit was disbanded in 2013, but reformed in 2017. At its height the divisional drugs unit was manned with six members but those numbers dwindled since 2019 until none remained towards the end of last year.

Chief Supt McGovern stated that, going forward, there will be a dedicated team based out of Cavan and another in Monaghan. He adds that the “beauty” of the new expanded divisional model that now includes Louth, is that there is now a level of shared expertise that, while may have existed in the past, operated at a distance from each other.

“They've an interest in policing drugs, an interest in the area and, in big operations, they can come together,” he said of the new Cavan and Monaghan units.

“We have experts in Louth now who have dealt with this area for some time. The drugs units will learn and, equally for the likes of Drogheda, they will learn from Cavan and Monaghan in terms of the cross-border crime element. So there are learnings for everybody.”

The top cop concludes by saying that a key element will be the collaborative approach to policing taken by forces north and south of the border.

“Criminals don't respect borders so we need to be ready,” says Chief Supt McGovern, who adds that a new canine unit for the region is also “almost there”.

“We'll soon have our own dog unit, a cybercrime unit, and we're the only division in the country with two Armed Support Units - in Cavan and one in Louth. No other division has that, so things are good.”