A Garda list of an estimated 100 drug dealers who have escaped potentially long jail terms by going on the run has been drawn up and distributed to senior officers across the country as part of a major drive against organised crime.
The senior officers have been urged to establish search-and-capture operations to catch dealers who are at large unlawfully.
The majority on the list were arrested in the last two years on suspicion of having commercial quantities of drugs for sale or supply and faced a mandatory 10-year jail term if convicted.
However, they have evaded prosecution because gardaí have been unable to find them after they were granted bail and then failed to appear at subsequent hearings.
Some are believed to have moved within cities or relocated to other parts of the country and have not come to Garda attention again.
A smaller number are known to have fled the jurisdiction for Britain and mainland Europe, bases from which some are suspected of shipping drugs into Ireland.
The list has recently been compiled by Garda authorities after a major trawl of Garda and court records. A profile of each drug dealer sought includes a physical description and personal details. These include their outstanding charges and the courts at which they have failed to appear.
Informed sources have told The Irish Times the vast majority on the list were arrested and charged since the start of 2005. A smaller number of arrests were made before that date.
One on the list disappeared after being caught with drugs valued at €700,000. Others are facing charges in relation to what sources called "large wholesale-sized quantities" of drugs. "Some of them are leading players," a source said.
About 70 of the people named on the list were charged under Section 15A of the Misuse of Drugs Act, which carries a 10-year mandatory sentence and up to life imprisonment. The section is applied where the drugs seized are deemed to be a commercial quantity valued at over €13,000. Most of the others on the list have been charged with a lesser offence but faced having charges increased to a Section 15A offence had they attended scheduled court appearances.
The renewed efforts to apprehend these suspects coincides with the arrest of 12 drug dealers in north Dublin yesterday, after a three-month Garda operation in which undercover members bought drugs from dealers.
It was the fourth such operation in recent months, following two identical undercover investigations in west Dublin - Operation Marigold and Operation Fossil - and one in Galway, Operation Scarf.
The latest - Operation Accessory - focused on a small number of prolific dealers selling drugs for long periods in north Dublin suburbs including Edenmore, Darndale, Belcamp, Baldoyle and Kilbarrack.
Those targeted had been operating in public places such as shopping centres and Dart stations. One of those arrested used a church car park as his sales base.
A team of undercover gardaí bought cocaine, ecstasy, heroin and cannabis from the dealers, and used their purchases as evidence. Some bought repeatedly from the same dealers. The operation culminated yesterday in a series of dawn searches of 15 houses, mostly in the Coolock area, and stretches of waste ground. One search of waste ground yielded two kilograms of cocaine valued at about €140,000.
About 80 gardaí were involved, drawn from the Coolock Drug Unit, the Garda National Drug Unit and stations in Clontarf and Raheny.
Smaller quantities of other drugs worth up to €5,000 were seized at the various addresses, along with sums of money. Those arrested were all men between 16 and 40.
Gardaí described the group as "significant local dealers" who were selling drugs both directly to drug users and, in some cases, to more minor dealers.
