GARDAI investigating a drugs smuggling gang were holding three people in custody last night in Co Meath and Co Westmeath.
One of the men was arrested boarding a flight to Britain from Shannon on Wednesday evening; the other two were arrested in Co Donegal yesterday morning.
The operation appears id have been timed to co ordinate with Operation Shadow, a strike against a major drug smuggling network by the UK's South East Regional Crime Squad, which culminated in seven arrests in southeast England yesterday.
The three men held in the Republic are being detained under the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act, 1996, which allows for detention for up to seven days without charge.
The Garda national drugs unit operating from an incident room in Kells Garda station in Co Meath, co ordinated the arrests in the Republic. The men arrested in Donegal, one of whom is in his 50s, were both being questioned last night at Mullingar station.
The man arrested at Shannon, aged in his 60s, was being detained at Kells. He was arrested by gardai who had travelled from Kells when he entered the departure area to board a British Airways flight to Manchester shortly after 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
He was taken to Ennis Garda station and then transferred to Kells.
Garda sources suggested detectives had been monitoring his movements for more than a month as part of a covert operation, and that the Drug Squad moved in when it was learned that he was attempting to leave the jurisdiction.
The man arrested at Shannon has lived for almost 20 years in an upmarket part of Newmarket on Fergus. Detectives searched his house and adjacent buildings yesterday, but up to last night no drugs had been seized.
British detectives confirmed that they had asked the Garda to carry out searches as part of an operation targeting a £200 million drug trafficking network in southern England.
More than 100 officers raided addresses in London, Middlesex and Hampshire yesterday, arresting six men and one woman.
Del Chief Insp Martin Bridger of the SERCS said: "This operation has resulted in the collapse of what we believe to be a very significant organisation who until now had remained undetected."