The third chapter looks back at Celtic Tiger Ireland and the rise of drug pushers
The story is told between testimonials and re-enactments
Ireland’s police force at the time were ill-equipped to tackle a growing heroin epidemic
Activist and comedian Dean Scurry
/
Is Dublin Narcos the real deal? Through first-hand testimonials, grainy archive footage and dramatised reconstructions, the hotly anticipated docu-drama presents a televisual tour of the capital’s complex history of addiction, violence and organised crime.
Writer/director Benedict Sanderson and his team deliver a coolly operated three-part structure. Episode one recalls the beginning of an accidental empire, with Larry Dunne – one of the most notorious crime bosses in Irish history – introducing heroin to a disillusioned city.
A busy follow-up tells of a burgeoning ecstasy culture that presented a world of endless – and dangerous – possibilities for ravers, users and dealers.
The third and final chapter revisits Celtic Tiger Ireland, where cocaine was the fuel of choice for opportunistic drug pushers and their wealthy customers. Here are the seven biggest talking points from the series.
It’s a shame, as Dublin Narcos would be a better documentary without them. Most of these silly re-enactments are sandwiched in between candid testimonials and feature professional actors portraying historical cops and robbers. But the tone is all off (think Love/Hate meets Fair City, with dodgier accents and silly wigs).
Elsewhere, there are questionable decisions in the editing department. Sanderson frames former Garda Assistant Commissioner Michael O’Sullivan like he’s Batman. At one point, O’Sullivan looks out over the city as if wondering to himself where it all went wrong.
The clumsy, melodramatic vibe grates after a while. This is real life – these are real people. Treat them that way.
How much do we learn about Larry Dunne here, and do we come away with more answers than we had going in?
Dublin Narcos covers the basics. A violent, volatile individual driven by greed, Dunne kick-started a heroin empire in the late 1970s. Nobody could touch the guy – even the people who worked for Dunne were afraid of him.
Here, his brother Christy paints a different picture. Their parents were the pride of the Liberties – renowned, well-liked and not to be messed with.
The children, too, had a reputation from the beginning, but Christy defends their character, in his own unique way.
"My brothers never hurt anybody,” he explains, “but some of them, they could kill you if they wanted to.”
Growing up, some of the Dunne boys spent time in industrial schools – and Larry was sent to the horrific Daingean Reformatory in Co Offaly. Was Dunne’s future written in stone? Details are sketchy, and we are left to wonder what, exactly, laid the foundations for a career in crime.
A renowned youth worker, activist and stand-up comedian, Dubliner Dean Scurry ponders the hypocrisy of a community that welcomed booze with open arms but turned on anyone who sought comfort in heroin.
“I just thought, as a kid, ‘why is that drug (heroin) bad, but this drug (alcohol) that my community seems to love – which is probably a bigger killer – why is this one all right, but that one’s bad?’” says Scurry. “We understood how to deal with the drinking, we just didn’t understand [drug abuse].”
Scurry explains that Dublin was a city brimming with pain, trauma and abuse. He suggests heroin was the only solution for some of its inhabitants who “needed something stronger than Guinness just to feel normal, just not to be in pain for a while”.
In the end, that solution devastated the capital, and Scurry’s articulate history lesson stands out here. The show is lucky to have him on board.
Paul Tracy recalls the first time he tried heroin. As a young man, he’d spent time living in Germany, but eventually returned home to an Ireland he no longer recognised. Most of his friends had already started using. He decided to join them.
“I took the pop in the arm,” remembers Paul. “If you can imagine I was just a tense, vibrating bag of nerves, and then this calm comes over from inside out, and melts over me like milk and honey.
"I felt like I fell back into a pink fluffy cloud, and I floated on that, and every neurosis, anxiety, nervousness or sense of doubt evaporated and left me in a blissful state. And I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, if I could feel like this every day, I could take on the world’.”
Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Even after a life-changing medical diagnosis, Paul continued to use. Somehow, he made it out the other side and, after 37 years, got clean.
His honest, heartfelt account is among a handful of invaluable and personal contributions scattered throughout this series.
In the early 1980s, the number one priority for Ireland’s police force was The Troubles, leaving An Garda Síochána ill-equipped to tackle a growing heroin epidemic.
So says Michael O’Sullivan, a former garda who decided to give undercover police work a try.
He borrowed a motorcycle jacket, gave himself a more untidy, rougher look and entered a city-centre flat complex on Dublin’s northside.
It was then that he initiated Ireland’s first mock-addict operation.
In other words, he tried to buy smack from a dealer, and it ended badly for the dealer. It was the first undercover drug bust in the history of the state and O’Sullivan would later enlist younger officers to infiltrate Dublin’s pill-driven rave culture.
Dublin Narcos presents itself in three chapters: ‘Ordinary Decent Criminals’, ‘The Entrepreneurs’ and ‘The Untouchables’. It’s in the final instalment that we meet Chris Curry, the weightlifting “cocaine man”.
Curry – who served jail time, and now works as a labourer – made so much money selling drugs that he started giving it away, and he once dropped £5000 on a single trip to Harrods, London.
Everything changed following the establishment of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB). Ireland’s wealthiest powder pushers now had to explain where, exactly, they got the money to pay for their big houses, fancy cars and Rolex watches. And, of course, most of them couldn’t.
“It made the opposition’s team a lot stronger,” says Curry, “it was like League of Ireland playing, you know, the Galacticos, with Messi – and they brought back f***ing Pele from the dead.”
You might have to ignore the awkward reconstructions in this part. Let’s instead focus on the elegant, extraordinary accounts provided by journalists Lise Hand and Liam Collins, who recall the bravery and determination of Ireland’s finest crime reporter.
Sanderson’s documentary reminds us that the late Veronica Guerin stood up to the bad guys when nobody else would. It cost Veronica her life, but it changed the criminal landscape, and essentially led to the establishment of the CAB.
We knew most of this already, but Hand and Collins provide new insight and fresh clarity. Indeed, Ireland will never know another reporter like Veronica Guerin.
All episodes of Dublin Narcos will be available on Sky Documentaries at 9pm on March 4.