Gardaí say they have dismantled a major international drug trafficking route and arrested a key figure in the transportation network.
Over 100kg of cocaine, worth more than €6 million, has been seized and five people have been arrested.
The drugs were being trafficked by a west Dublin-based organised crime group.
The operation is being led by the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau and involves over 100 officers from different units all over the country.
The bureau has been targeting a family-based organised crime gang from west Dublin which it says has been trafficking millions of euro of heroin and cocaine into the country.
As part of a surveillance and intelligence led operation, gardaí searched a remote farmhouse in Co Wexford last night and discovered over 100kg of cocaine, estimated to be worth over €6m, concealed in an articulated truck on the farm.
Four people, middle-aged men, were arrested at the scene.
Follow-up searches were carried out in Dublin and Wexford and a fifth person was arrested in Dublin.
A substantial amount of cash has also been seized and gardaí say this is still being counted as part of what remains a live operation.
The five men in custody are being detained.
Garda Headquarters said it was unable to comment at this stage as the operation remains live.
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One of those in custody has been described as a key figure in the logistics business who owns and runs a transport company on the east coast.
It employs more than ten people and has over ten articulated trucks on the road, including refrigerated trucks that transport goods in and out of the country.
On the face of it, a respectable businessman with a logistics company, gardaí suspect he has become involved with the Dublin-based organised crime group known as 'the family".
'The Family' - one of Ireland's main drug traffickers
Based in west Dublin and run by brothers, gardaí say the gang has international connections and is one of the main traffickers of heroin and cocaine into Ireland.
As the name suggests, the organised crime group known as 'the family" is a family-based operation, some of whose members are already convicted drug dealers and have served time in prison.
The gang supplies drugs not just in Ballyfermot, Ronanstown, Clondalkin and Tallaght but also nationally through its links with other criminal gangs.
Gardaí say it is the primary heroin dealing gang in the country and has quietly established itself as such in recent years while the focus had been on the Kinahan organised crime group.
However today's cocaine seizure is the latest in a series of multimillion euro drugs seizures from the gang.
Last July, gardaí seized another €3m worth of cocaine from the gang which was found in suitcases in a house in Clondalkin, and multimillion euro seizures were also intercepted on boats and private planes.
Gardaí say more than €30m worth of drugs have been seized from organised crime groups in the first six months of this year, along with more than 300 guns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, more than €4m in cash with thousands of arrests, searches and charges preferred.
