'Drug smugglers can come and go as they like in West Cork due to lack of checks' 

“I’ve noticed a few people over the years getting very wealthy overnight,” he adds.

“I couldn’t say if they were into dealing drugs, but the fact that so much of it is coming in via our coastline, it wouldn’t surprise me.

“The general consensus here is that only a fraction of what is getting smuggled in is getting caught.”

Fellow Cork County Council councillor Danny Collins agrees.

“Our coastline is wide open,” he says.

“The fact that we don’t seem to have enough money to run our navy is not great.

“It is easy to bring the drugs into West Cork.

“The fact that drugs are so prevalent now in Irish society points to one thing: A good supply of it.”

Their comments are hardly surprising when you consider that, for much of January and February, the Naval Service has only been able to put one ship out on sea patrols.

One of the things puzzling locals in and around the hamlet of Tragumna is: Why here?

“There are around 100 piers, jetties, and slipways dotted around the coast,” a resident in a nearby townland said.

“As sleepy as Tragumna might well appear, it is positively busy in comparison to how things are in more remote places.”

Barloge, about 7km from Baltimore, is another spot that people believe is wide open for smugglers.

It is not overlooked, it is very remote, and it is difficult to get to.

Indeed, it has proved to be a place to land drugs in the past for those reasons.

Near that again is another secluded spot, Tralispean Beach.

There are dozens of areas within a 20-30km radius of Tragumna that have road links and remoteness.

Meandering through the sleepy, stone-walled, boreens and narrow tree-lined avenues, there are regular entry points to secluded beaches or small jetties.

The former coxswain of the Baltimore RNLI Lifeboat, Kieran Cotter, shakes his head as he looks out over Baltimore Harbour — a place that has been home to him and his family since 1970.

“Never mind trying to find the small jetties and piers along the coast of West Cork,” he says.

“All anybody needs to do is come to Baltimore.

“One of the best places to bring drugs would be the likes of the pier in Baltimore.

“There are fishing boats coming and going all the time, other boats too, you could just slip in.

“The place is wide open.

“There are little or no checks.”

Like so many others, he remembers “the big one” — a €440m drugs haul at Dunlough Bay, West Cork, on July 2, 2007.

He has good reason to remember it, because he helped retrieve the bales of drugs that had been washed into the sea when the rigid inflatable boat carrying them sank.

“One of the mistakes they made was not realising that boats are like cars,” he said.

“The more weight you put in them, the more fuel they use and they miscalculated the amount of fuel they would need.”

After they ran aground, Mr Cotter’s RNLI crew was one of two tasked with recovering the bales.

“We picked up 56 bales within half an hour,” he recalled.

Asked if he thinks Coastal Watch — which is based around a confidential tip-off phone line for anybody who spots anything suspicious — is effective, he wonders aloud.

“You have loads of people of all nationalities coming in and out of Baltimore every day,” he said.

“Most of us pay no heed to them.

“The reality is, most of the people bringing the drugs in don’t want to draw attention to themselves.

“They come and go and you don’t hear about most of them.”