Liam Collins

Looking back, you can see it on those pages of the paper.

You can see how she obviously made contact with Gardie and detectives and some people in the criminal fraternity.

I think there was a big interest in the time.

There was a feeling that the criminals were getting the upper hand and that they were making so much money that they could use the system and the legal system to avoid

being sent to jail to get off on technicalities.

The Gardaí probably had been greatly distracted by the troubles.

Organised crime had developed without most of the public being aware of it.

I mean...

I thought I was reasonably clued in to public events, and yet the names of these criminals were news to me as they were to members of the public who suddenly discovered that there was a whole...

one underworld out there I mean when you look back on it the people who were buying cheap cigarettes out in North Street some of them from the independent didn't realise that this was the bottom of the food chain that led to Gilligan but higher up there were all sorts of cannabis to heroin you know that's where the money was