All language subtitles for Dublin.Narcos.S01E02.WEBRip.x264-ION10

The following programme contains
strong language and flashing images.

I can nearly smell the mushrooms.

Magic mushrooms.

Growing up, I would have used
a lot of recreational drugs...

...but ecstasy was my favourite drug.

And I smile. I'm not a good advert
for "don't do drugs" or anything.

So...

But the first time I took ecstasy,
the thing that stands out to me now

is the sharpness of my vision.

I remember just really appreciating
the pattern of the wallpaper.

And I remember thinking, "Why don't
I walk around every day on my estate

and appreciate things?

Why don't I go, 'Oh, my God!
Look at that beautiful flower'?"

Dublin used to be
about the gaggle,

about the pints, about the pub.

And then it wasn't...
it was about the rave.

It was about ecstasy.

The whole purpose of the rave scene
was we were there to dance.

And that's what we did. And we
danced and we danced and we danced!

You know. And there's nothing wrong
with that.

Everybody was happy.

If you took ecstasy, it was like
walking up a stepladder

and then getting to the top.

And then for two and a half hours,
it was euphoria.

You were up there with the clouds
or up there with the gods.

You know what I mean?

It was very easy
to buy batches of ecstasy,

and start your own little
part to play in selling drugs.

There was so much money coming in,

and I didn't feel at the time
I was doing anything wrong.

I was giving someone
a beautiful experience.

Back in the '80s,

the drug business
was in its infancy,

but ecstasy
just took hold all of a sudden,

and certain prominent criminals

saw the good profits
that were to be made

and were very quick to adapt
to this whole new phenomenon.

It was a recipe for disaster.

♪ Here I go,
falling down, down, down

♪ My mind is a blank

♪ My head is spinning
around and around

♪ As I go deep
into the funnel of love ♪

- Get me that bag.
- What?

That bag.

"Poverty and decay in Dublin.

The whole country is sliding down
the road to economic ruin."

"Many people are utterly depressed
and pessimistic

about the economic situation
in our country."

"There is no future
economically for Ireland.

We are bunched, banjaxed
and spifflicated."

We are rearing our children
for the export boat,

and they should get on it
and get out as soon as possible.

How many can see their future
outside this country?

As a young gay man
growing up in Dublin,

it was a quite brutal experience.

It was illegal to be gay until 1993
in Ireland.

You could get two years in prison
for holding hands

or kissing in public or in private.

You could also get ten years
in prison for intercourse.

I believe it to be an abnormality.

I do find the physical act
absolutely revolting in the extreme.

Going to a dance club where I could
actually just unburden myself,

there was something enormously
self-empowering about that.

This was the main entrance to Side's
dance club when it first opened.

There was just simply nothing
like it in Dublin at the time.

Happy memories.

Side's opened in Dublin in 1986

and E started to come into Dublin

in significant quantities
by the summer of that year.

And they were in little capsules
and they were so strong.

There was such a ritual to it.
They were so strong,

you'd pop open the capsule and you'd
you just dish out half of the powder

and then keep the rest back in,
keep that till later on.

The effect of one little pill
on a city

is that it unlocks this code.

And the next thing is you had
working class straight boys,

you had middle class gay women

and everybody in between

just caught up
in this communal experience.

And it very quickly became embraced
and consumed by the masses.

When this city took ecstasy,
it created harmony.

The gender or the sexuality
or the politics or the colour,

you just didn't see it,
it wasn't a thing.

You could be a working class fella
rubbing down a gay barrister's son.

In this setting, it doesn't matter.

Are you coming up?

That's all that matters.

♪ MOBY: Go

I can still feel the euphoric rush
going through me now...

just as I did back then.

The rave scene began to explode

and develop itself
into a bigger thing.

Dance music became a culture.

We'd be guaranteed to have maybe
3,000-5,000 people in the place.

And we had the bigger raves,
the Olympic Ballroom,

the Mansion House.

I remember the first time walking
into the Mansion House.

It was incredible, the feeling!

It was, like, intense with heat.

Everyone is... pounding hard, shouting.

Blowing the whistles.

Just... the feeling of being
in that building with your people...

...it was just so powerful.

Ecstasy works as a magic pill.

It was just like, you know,

a magician
literally flicked his fingers

and you were just taken
from one place to another place,

deported into this absolute world
of just magic.

You know, as a young little kid
you were known by your clothes.

It was how
you really expressed who you were.

We would have had our curly hair

and, sure, we'd be dancing
out on the street.

I would have been around 14 or 15
the first time I took an ecstasy.

Quite young... quite vulnerable.

And, you know, a girl. I was not
long after making me confirmation,

let's be real here. I made
me confirmation when I was 12.

So two years down the line,

I'm in raves
and I'm dancing and taking drugs.

I took an oath in me confirmation
not to take drugs. Sorry.

How did you come to start selling E?

I would have been one of the ones
that would have been dancing around,

mingling in with the crowd,
meeting new people

and introducing them to what I had.

Yeah, I was very good at talking
about the drug that I took

and how it was doing for me.

And I think they already knew,
cos I was dancing pretty well,

and my hair looked great
and my clothes looked amazing.

So they were like, "Who's she?"

So we created an audience,

and we captured people very quickly.

We used to use a Kinder egg,
the plastic,

so you were able to fill them up
with ecstasy,

so they'd be everywhere
on your person, you know,

in your pockets and stuff.

And that was the start of it.

I believe that we were tasting
something so new, so different,

and I was gonna promote it
really well.

Dublin in the late '80s,

ecstasy comes along. And I happened
to be in charge of a drug unit

in the inner city where
all the raves were taking place.

It was relatively inexpensive
to make,

it was very easily stored,
very easily transported,

and very easily distributed
once you got it into the country.

Through our investigations,
we found this new drug, this MDMA,

was primarily coming in
through the Netherlands.

Being made in back street garages,
in back street labs

by chemists who imported
the components from China

and made up ecstasy tablets
in all shapes, forms and colours.

And they sent 'em throughout Europe,
throughout the globe.

All sorts of tablets were being sold
to these young people.

There was no quality assurance.

It was a bit like Russian roulette.

But you could make an ecstasy tablet
back in the '90s for maybe 50 cents,

maybe even less.

You could sell it at that time
for 25 euros a tablet.

A massive mark up.

For drug dealers in Dublin
this was a massive opportunity.

There wasn't that many people
selling it at that time.

In the club, the Olympic Ballroom,
you were getting 1,000 people,

Friday, Saturday, sometimes Sunday.

Even if you only took one E each...

So we went up and we took it over.
We were tooled.

Tooled? What does that mean?
Weapons, you know.

Guns?

Weapons.

Padraig.

Put your hand in.

Root around you fucking muppet.

The white dove.

Each one contains 200 milligrams
of methylenedioxy-methamphetamine.

That's MDMA
to yous fucking geniuses.

These little fuckers...
are gonna make us minted!

I classed meself in my own head
as an entrepreneur back then.

And I was a go-getter.

This is Millbrook Field. This was
a den of iniquity back in the day.

So, anything you wanted,
you got... you got here.

And this is where
we used to sell the hash

from five to seven every day.

The police used to raid this field,

so we had to be
a step ahead of them.

So, see the yellow flowers?

Buttercups.

So what we would do is
we would pull out a sod of grass,

put all of the drugs, and then
we'd just put the sod back down.

And if you look at all the walls,
they'd be our exit routes.

We used to just climb up,
bounce, you'd be over.

And once you're gone
into a back garden, that's it.

They'd be lucky
if they caught anybody.

When the rave scene kicked off,
I was able to utilise

the trade route
that I already had from the hash.

It was just a natural progression.

I already had
not only the workforce,

but I also had... a captive audience,
you know what I mean.

The first E I got
were California sunrises.

I got 1,000.
So I paid 15,000 for them.

They really took off.

Then you had the love doves.

Then you had the snowballs.

My favourite was the mad bastards.

So now my figures
are at 1,500 people,

Friday, Saturday, sometimes Sunday.

That's 4,500.

Every one of them wants an E,
probably two.

You're looking at 9,000 E.

That's a lot of E.

I made a lot of money.

I could earn up to 10,000 a week.

Put it this way,
I bought a house when I was 21.

But we always
wanted, wanted, wanted.

.

Coming into the early '90s,

Ireland suddenly
is a great footballing nation,

and Italia 90 greatly enhanced
the psyche of the country.

People in Dublin
were actually seeing a bit of hope.

There was a continued recession,
high unemployment,

really high emigration,

but economically,
you were seeing green shoots.

You had American factories
opening up and offering employment.

And now here was this drug that
suddenly made you feel brilliant.

And we took to that.
We really took to that.

The way ecstasy was bought and sold

was very challenging
for law enforcement in Ireland.

Lots of ordinary, decent people,

non-criminal people, college kids,
were buying ecstasy .

And you were trying to pick the guys
who were selling to figure out

who are they, where are they getting
it, who was behind it,

who are bringing big amounts
of it in and making huge profits.

In the early stages,
we tried to raid them.

That proved too challenging.

My house would be raided regularly.

They'd even raid the house
when I wasn't there.

They'd take something stupid out
like a video recorder or something

just to justify the raid.

But they couldn't catch me.
They tried their best,

but I was calculated.
I didn't carry drugs.

My ecstasy was sold by other people.

The gang that I was with,
we were getting some money,

you know, in our teenage years.

But the quicker it was coming in,
the quicker you wanted it spent,

because
it wasn't going into the bank.

I would spend my money on clothes
and lovely dinners.

Eating out always, you know,
I don't think I ever cooked.

We were able to get a car...
a nice car.

We also put a deposit down on
a property on a beautiful estate.

But time changed for me.

I mean, by the time I was 17,
I became pregnant,

and I had to juggle.

One side of it was being a mother,

the other side of it
was being a drug dealer.

It was always keeping the balls
up in the air, you know,

but balls were dropping too.

It became bigger and more organised
and everyone had a target,

you know, like, of how much
you were gonna make in the night.

Initially, the ecstasy
were carried in through your person,

but then they became thousands
and you couldn't carry them in,

so they would have been packed
off outside, maybe in a car.

This is definitely
something that I would have wore.

My goodness! The pocket here. Oh,
my God! It was filled with money.

There was our group from Ballyfermot

and we had these particular
coloured boiler suits

and they all wore them.

So you're talking like, men,
you know, seven, eight, ten men

wearing the same colour.
It was quite intense,

it was quite intimidating.

Our clothing
was definitely our uniform.

But there was also other groups
in the rave

that were selling
and doing their thing also.

The tension became real in the raves

and, you know, that's where you had
to be mindful and watchful

of what you were doing,
who you were talking to, you know,

because weapons
became very much involved,

people were carrying.

I got called up to the toilet
on the middle floor.

One of the lads from Ballyfermot,
he took a piece out on me.

So, I grabbed it and I said,
"Pull the fucking thing!

Pull it!" He pulled away.
"You're not fucking right!"

I remember,
you go up into this nightclub,

you're on the ground floor, first
floor, second floor, third floor,

different looking fuckers,
fuckers who weren't there to dance,

fuckers who were there to collect.

We were all kids raving,
these looked like men.

These looked like fuckers
not to be fucked with.

They look at you once and that's it.

I remember going into a place
and a fella just headbutted me,

that's it, there's no conversation.
Just like, bang, "Fuck off!"

What do you say to fuck off?

You don't say anything,
you just fuck off.

The old system... wasn't working.

We figured we needed people

who you would not think would be... police.

People on the inside.

In the past,
I had done a lot of undercover work

in relation to the heroin scene...

...but ten years had moved on
and I needed a corresponding crew

who were young enough and could
talk the talk

and effectively blend in
in some of these raves.

And one day,
I was in the police canteen

and I saw this band of youngsters,

who were maybe three, four weeks
in the Guards

at the beginning of their training programme,

who all looked about 17 or 18.

And I thought they would know more
about the rave scene

certainly than I did.

How's it going?
My name's Detective Sergeant

Michael O'Sullivan
of the Drug Squad.

So I sat down with a number of them
and asked them

who would have the nerve
to go to the rave clubs

and identify the guys
who were selling ecstasy,

to buy the drugs, so that we
could then arrest the dealer.

I need new faces, young recruits,
who can pass off as clubbers.

Who's up for it?

And there were four or five of them
who stepped up to the mark

and said they'd give it a go.

I wanted 'em to look... seedy.
I wanted 'em to look exhausted.

I wanted 'em to look
like they were on ecstasy.

So I said to 'em, "Do me a favour,
I know it sounds silly," I said,

"Don't wash your hair."

To see them transformed,
I thought to myself,

if they could act as well as they
looked, they'd get away with it.

We had a product that was really,
really good,

and we were gonna protect
that as much as we could

to get the money that we deserved
for being there

and doing what we were doing.

I tried not to carry
any more than 5,000 on me.

I was only there
for probably an hour

and I was having
to get rid of that money.

But it was constant money
just flowing, flowing, you know.

One of our guys would be
on the motorbike in the city centre

and he would be
collecting and dropping.

We became aware
that a number of gangs

were being supplied
by one individual on a motorbike.

We built up the intelligence
and the evidence

and we realised
the Olympic Ballroom was the centre,

the place to sell it.

♪ If your name's not down,
you're not coming in ♪

It was packed with young people.

The heat, the chaos,
almost bursting at the doors.

♪ If your name's not down,
you're not coming in ♪

A lot of criminals,
a lot of drug dealers...

and for the undercover,
quite junior police officers

to work in there,
it was a nightmare.

♪ If your name's not down...
Not tonight ♪

The Olympic would have been the
main one that I would have went to.

♪ If your name's not down,
you're not coming in ♪

You would nearly taste the sweat.

Everyone is pumping, dancing.

And I knew walking in
my people were there.

And I knew I was safe
walking over to them.

♪ Not tonight,
you're not on the list ♪

On the first night,
I briefed four of the young people,

and I said,
"Keep the dealer in sight.

And if he leaves, you leave
and we'll look after the rest."

Were you ever aware
of undercover police in the clubs?

Well, it's like everything else,

you're always told, you know,
who's who.

Either someone got a tip off
somewhere along the line

and they're saying,
"Watch this fella, that fella."

But the ecstasy did make you
a little bit paranoid.

And, you know, you'd be like,
"Oh, they're watching me!"

It was hard to tell.

If someone says to you,
"That's a copper."

You're kind of
looking at them going, "Is it?

Are you sure?
I've just spoke to him."

They look like they're out of it,

they look like
they've taken something.

The undercover police were
on their own for several hours.

I was down the street
in a doorway...

...filled with, er...
trepidation, really.

As regards backup,
they had no radio.

The undercover cops,
you know, they were young,

they dressed like us,
they actually danced like us.

One of them, I remember,
she had curly hair like me,

she could have been my sister.

What's the story, love?

I'm looking for a few E's.

Are you, yeah?
Could I got a couple of yokes?

Some pills?

Yeah.

Do I look like
a fucking dealer to you?

Well... I think there's a fella
over there you could try.

I literally just saw you.

Piss off, will ya?

The doors of the nightclub opened
and 700-800 young people came out.

And the undercover officers,
all of them identified a dealer.

They were subsequently arrested.

.

And as a result of those arrests
and the evidence obtained,

we had the premises closed down.

I was never caught
by undercover police,

but you were always on guard

and being very watchful
of what was going on,

but it could have happened.
And that was the risk you took,

and that was probably the thrill
out of the whole lot of it too.

It was, "I'm gonna get one over you.
You're not gonna catch me."

But with the closedown
of the Olympic,

it was like a sweep
that came into the city centre.

Then the rave scene changed.

That's when underground stuff
really started to take off.

Down the country, fields,
they went everywhere to dance.

♪ Oh, is this the way they say
the future's meant to feel?

♪ Or just 20,000 people
standing in a field

♪ And I don't quite understand
just what this feeling is

♪ But that's OK, cos we're all
sorted out for E's and wizz ♪

We took over a building site
up in Ballyfermot.

It started
on about the 24th of December

and then went on
to about the 8th of January

before everybody got tired and went
- home.
- So how many days is that?

I don't know, you tell me.

I don't... I ain't counting.
Maybe two weeks, like.

Non-stop?
Non-stop, yeah, no problem.

Were you aware the police were
starting to target clubs and things?

They tried. They tried,
but you could never beat us.

We were one step ahead of them
all the time.

Sometimes you would take over
houses that were being built.

Somebody would have the decks
and we'd set up raves every night.

If you go up that road there,
where that railings is,

go down there, there used to be
a priest's house there

and the priest was gone.
I don't know where he was gone.

And someone said there was a rave
in the priest's house.

When they opened the door, I mean,

tens of us jumped out
from behind a wall into the house.

But the decks was there, they were
playing all the fucking tunes.

And the whole house
was like a '90s inner-city club

transported into the priest's house.
in Killinarden.

It was one of the best nights ever,
I swear to God.

Some people would say I spent most
of my career on drugs,

erm, metaphorically, so I was
involved from the very early '80s

when heroin hit Dublin
all the way through my career.

Back in the early '90s,
what you saw with the gangs,

the way they developed,

was the drug business
was becoming more profitable,

more organised
and more sophisticated.

And they were trying to get better
product at better prices.

And we had intelligence
that one particular gang

were trying to set up their
production here in Ireland.

Their intention
was to be able to produce

hundreds of thousands of tablets.

And they had
even procured a chemist.

Fellas... this is Thomas.

He's from the UK and he's a chemist.

All right, Thomas.

We no longer just sell yokes...

...we make 'em.

Ladies and gentlemen,

we have a result.

Ireland are the winners of this
year's Eurovision Song Contest.

The mid-'90s in Ireland
was an interesting time.

We had won loads of Eurovisions
back to back.

Riverdance was out.

The Late Late Show had Boyzone on

and they were being presented as
this new clean version of Ireland.

But, meanwhile,
I was looking out my window

it wasn't squeaky clean Ireland...

...it was scary.

By the mid-'90s, it was kind of like
the rave scene became affected.

An awful lot of people really went
out of their way to get too high.

And they couldn't
find their way down.

They would call it,
like, a youth gaggle.

It meant
that they'd been taking E all night

and the E is starting to wear off.

A lot of people would report
that their first time using heroin

was actually after being at a rave
and taking ecstasy.

And the heroin would help them
come down from the E.

There's a link between heroin
and ecstasy in cities like Dublin,

Manchester, Liverpool, London.

When the party... continues,
and it was non-stop,

and people started
to make huge money

on the back
of all this happiness and music,

and filling venues and warehouses,
there was a comedown.

There was a huge, lovely high,
but there's a comedown.

And at the very bottom of that
comedown there's a space for heroin.

I wasn't allowed to take heroin.

It was actually the golden rule,
you weren't to take it.

But rules were there to be broken
and I always broke the rules.

I couldn't smoke it
in front of me children,

I was always in the bathroom
with the door locked doing it.

No one really seeing
what I was doing or smoking,

so me habit became quite big
in a very, very short time.

We thought we were the most powerful
things and we were untouchable...

...but the heroin just took over.

I remember
the first time I used heroin,

it was just an experiment.

But there was something in it,
or there was something in me,

the heroin filled a void.

If I had a car, I wanted your car.

If I had a house,
I wanted your house.

I had a girlfriend,
I wanted your girlfriend,

You know, there was always that want
in me, you know,

trying to fill that void.

And the heroin done that.
It subdued you.

Subdued the thinking,
your emotions, your feelings.

I just wanted to stop hurting.

I was raped and abused
for a number of years,

erm... by a priest in the local area.

I was an altar boy.

This priest
was involved in the youth club,

he was involved in the school,

and he'd be at you in the showers
or in the swimming pool.

Being so young, not even knowing
what's going on with ya,

you know, erm, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten years of age,

I don't know how to manage that.

And the power and control
that that has...

So it was like, "Give me fucking
gear or I'm gonna kill someone."

You know what I mean,
or I'm gonna kill meself.

That's a bad place to be in,
that sickness in your head like,

that violence like, you know,
in your head.

I can feel it rising in me here,
you know. Erm...

It's a long time
since it's had that power over me.

But, erm...
I never wanted to be that person,

and the heroin
just blocked out everything.

But, eventually...

I was actually out on the streets
meself... selling bags,

you know what I mean, of heroin,
just to keep a habit.

There was one day when I went down
to source my heroin

for the rest of the week...

...and left with the drugs.

The Guards just swarmed the car.

And that was it,
there was no getting away from it.

And I went to the courts
with my father.

Me dad just turned and looked at me
and he said, "Run!"

And so that day
I ran out of the car

and I got the ferry over to the UK.

So that's where it really, really
got messy for me.

...carrying drugs around the UK
and also back in to Dublin.

A lot of Irish criminals
had made a lot of contacts overseas.

Traffickers were using mules
who were sometimes addicts,

sometimes people who were willing
to do it for money.

And there were
a lot of bigger seizures.

You could have 25,000,
you may even have 50,000 tablets.

But by 1995, we felt that we had
enough of an evidential trail

to actually raid a warehouse
being used by an Irish man

suspected of involvement in
very large scale drug distribution.

Oi, mask!

Armed Garda!
Get on the fucking floor!

Let me see your fucking hands!

There were three people arrested.

All of these guys
were later convicted.

But, unfortunately, there wasn't
enough evidence available

to actually charge
the criminal behind this operation.

And his drug business
continued to grow.

The person who's at the top
of the pyramid is rarely hands on.

And in the '90s,
if you got into the drugs business

and you didn't use the product,
and you distributed it properly,

and you were
sufficiently far up the chain,

you were not in all probability
going to be caught.

And when cocaine came along
there was a lot of money to be made.

All sorted.

Be on time. Don't fuck it up!

I never set out...
to be a drug addict.

I never set out
to be a survivor of sexual abuse.

I never set out to be a drug dealer.

But prison saved my life.

It gave me that break from society.

It gave me that break from being
that perceived hard man.

Prohibition in Ireland
has no evidence.

You're never going to have a war on
drugs because drugs are an object,

you know, they're a substance,
the war will always be on people.

We just need a much more sensible
approach to drug use in Ireland.

I was smoking heroin.

I was taking crack.

And... I'd just had enough.

I just said, "I don't wanna be
a part of this world anymore."

I went to a church
that I made me confirmation in.

I had the drugs cooked,
the syringe was ready...

...and I wanted to die outside
of the church.

I went to light a candle
for me children.

I went in to light a candle
for me parents,

because it was my way of saying,
"I'm sorry."

And a lady walked over to me and she
just placed her hand on me shoulder

and she said,
"Light a candle for yourself."

And I walked out of the church
and I threw me drugs away,

like I was burying them, because
something had to die that day.

And within two weeks,
I went into treatment.

"Welcome to the Celtic Tiger."

All of a sudden,
everybody was a millionaire.

Cocaine just became
all part of that.

There was a gang that heard about
me driving skills,

and they offered me a bit of work
as a courier.

My nickname was Tarzan,
cos I had a 21" neck.

It was easy.

If I wanted to, I could have brought
in a fucking elephant.

The Guards
just didn't have the knowledge

how to bring these guys down.

They were untouchable.
Mickey Mouse!

Veronica realised
something had to be done.

I'm a crime reporter.

That's what I do
and somebody has to do it.

The feeling was she was getting very
close to someone very big.

It was the murder
of a young mother and a journalist.

♪ CREDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL:
Bad Moon Rising

♪ I see the bad moon rising

♪ I see trouble on the way

♪ Don't go around tonight

♪ Well, it's bound to take your life

♪ There's a bad moon on the rise ♪

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