In the late Seventies and early Eighties, in recession-blighted Dublin, one family made millions. By flooding their own community with heroin, brothers from the Dunne crime family exploited the hardship in the city to rack up huge wealth while countless lives were ruined by pitiless addiction. Those who came close to exposing a clan so emboldened by police inaction they walked Ireland’s historic streets like rock stars were summarily murdered. Christy Dunne Jnr, interviewed for Sky’s new three-part docu-series, Dublin Narcos, displays no remorse when asked if it’s true that he once punched a judge in court.
He laughs: “Yeah, I hit him right in the jaw and knocked him off the fucking bench.”
Written and directed by Benedict Sanderson, Dublin Narcos is from the team behind BAFTA Award-winning Liverpool Narcos and charts how the Dunnes rose to become one of Ireland’s most terrifying gangs.
Christy Jnr’s kingpin brothers Larry and Mickey “Dazzler” Dunne introduced “smack” to Ireland and were the Al Capones of their era, completely out of the Gardaí’s reach. The Dunnes – abused themselves by ”sadist and psychopathic” teachers at Daingean industrial school – graduated as armed robbers and burglars, quickly gaining a reputation for ruthlessness.
The documentary combines archive news footage with dramatised scenes – in one, we see how drugs mules, named “swallowers and stuffers”, carried out regular runs from Iran following the Shah regime’s collapse via Europe, earning Larry the moniker “Larry doesn’t carry”.
The twisted morality of the business is evident in one interview, conducted in 1984 with the Dunnes’ father Christy Snr, where he almost seems to praise them for robbing banks. “So long as nobody was hurt,” he says. “They’re getting money the handy way.”
He might think so, but it’s impossible to ignore the plight of addict Paul Tracy. As an 18-year-old he stole from his mother’s purse to buy heroin. At first, it gave him a feeling like being atop a “pink fluffy cloud”. Charismatic and good looking, Paul could have been frontman of a band on the rise. But he caught Aids from intravenous drug use, as cases across Dublin doubled in a nine-month period.
Despite this, the issue seems to have been largely ignored at the time. Senior officers considered the IRA’s bombing campaign their primary focus; getting them to pay more than casual interest to the burgeoning drugs scene affecting children as young as 11 is likened in the documentary to turning an oil tanker in the opposite direction.
Ultimately, the Dunnes were brought down by people power. Brave mothers mobilised to rid their council estate of drug dens. Two young police officers ignored the directives of the top brass, risking their lives going undercover as “Mockeys” (mock addicts) to catch peddlers. Concerned Parents Against Drugs, an angry collective of mothers, marched on the dealers’ flats.
When Sinn Féin, the IRA’s political wing, infiltrated their group and vigilante excesses sprung up, the then Taoiseach Charles Haughey gave his police commissioner an ultimatum. The Dunnes were rounded up and jailed. As Larry was taken away to begin a 14-year sentence, he famously remarked: “If you think we’re bad, wait till you see what’s coming after us.”
The series also hears from fearless journalists whose attempts to expose the drug barons eventually lead to the death of one of their bravest, Veronica Guerin in June 1996.
As the Eighties ended, a new drug appears on Dublin’s streets: ecstasy. Mobsters like the Dunnes face extinction due to the birth of a new breed of dealer – the club ravers themselves. As Dublin entered the Nineties, drugs went multinational. Criminal rivalries started getting rougher and more violent, making “us all targets, unfortunately”, covert police officer (and later police commissioner) Nóirín O’Sullivan attests.
The series isn’t perfect. Towards the end of the first episode: Ordinary Decent Criminals, the filmmakers make a clumsy attempt to compare the now metropolitan city’s “hypocritical” drinking culture amid Catholicism with the heroin-fuelled sins of the past. It jars and seems an unnecessary departure in an otherwise free-flowing, well-researched programme.
