The increase in the activities of drug gangs is due to the increase in demand, particularly for cocaine, as a result of the improved economic situation.
That is according to the Assistant Garda Commissioner in Charge of Special Crime Operations John O'Driscoll.
He said that contrary to patterns identified in the Europol drugs report, gardaí do not see evidence of urban-based criminal gangs selling drugs directly in rural areas and subsuming the activities of local-based rural drug gangs.
Mr O'Driscoll said the main gangs were still co-operating with rural drug gangs and tend to supply them with drugs, which they in turn distribute locally.
He said drugs were now a transnational business and gardaí are following both the product and the personnel involved even if they move abroad.
Mr O'Driscoll said gardaí intend to assign garda liaison officers to North and South America and the Middle East as part of the fight against Irish and international organised crime groups.
He said gardaí were "getting closer" to dismantling the major organised crime gangs and have had "major successes" against the gang's operations both in Ireland, Australia and the UK where many of its members are now based.
The gangs, he said, have huge power based on their wealth, but he also said gardaí were working closely with law enforcement in the UK, Spain and the Netherlands to tackle the main gangs and prevent others becoming as big as them.
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Mr O'Driscoll said the Garda’s Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau has on 73 occasions over the past four years saved the lives of people targeted for murder by crime gangs.
They have also seized €168m worth of drugs, 109 firearms, more than 3,400 rounds of ammunition and €11m in cash.
Mr O'Driscoll said the proportion of foreign nationals or ethnic crime gangs involved in organised crime in Ireland was relatively low, saying the vast majority of people from other countries living in Ireland were law abiding.
Ethnic gangs, he said, often prey largely on their own nationalities and he cited the case of Vietnamese drugs gangs involved in cannabis grow houses.
Mr O'Driscoll said they exploit poor and disadvantaged people from their own countries and traffick them to Europe and Ireland to cultivate the drugs.
The Assistant Commissioner also pointed out that gang members from other countries work closely with Irish organised crime gangs, as illustrated by the arrests and convictions here of the Lithuanian gunman Imre Arakas and the Moroccan gangster Naoufal Fassih, both of whom were linked to the Kinahan organised crime gang.
He also insisted that there were no "policing no-go areas" in Ireland and gardaí would enter and patrol any part of the country.
