A court in London has been told that a plot to smuggle 1.5 tonnes of cocaine into Ireland at Dunlough Bay in Cork in 2007 was 'a sophisticated conspiracy'.
A 57-year-old Englishman,John Gary Edney, has gone on trial charged with supplying the vehicles used in the operation.
The cocaine had an estimated street value of €400m and was the largest drugs seizure in the history of the State.
Mr Edney and two other men, who have already pleaded guilty, were arrested in England last summer.
That was two years after an attempt to smuggle the cocaine ashore in Dunlough Bay was thwarted by bad weather. The rigid inflatable boat used to land the drugs foundered.
The jury was shown RTÉ News footage of the ensuing rescue operation and retrieval of bales of cocaine by the Castletownbere lifeboat and the coast guard.
The prosecution say Mr Edney bought three Land Rovers for cash from a dealership near Peterborough in England for use in the operation.
One of them was blocked by garda cars above Dunlough Bay, and the two others were later found abandoned at Crookhaven.
Four men arrested by gardaí have already been sentenced to long prison terms by Cork Circuit Criminal Court. Others who fled the scene are still at large.
The cocaine had been brought across the Atlantic in a catarmaran called Lucky Day.
The court is due to hear evidence of how the vessel was tracked by the Irish naval service as part of a joint task force.
A number of gardaí and Irish Navy personnel are due to give evidence in London over the next few days.
