Solicitor who helped establish Criminal Assets Bureau to be honoured with freedom of Cork city

A man who helped to establish the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) is to be granted the freedom of Cork city in recognition of his work in combating organised crime. Barry Galvin, who served as the bureau’s legal officer from 1996 until 2003, is to be honoured with the award in January. The move has received formal approval from Cork City Council after a proposal by lord mayor Damian Boylan received broad cross-party support.Boylan said he was delighted the council had agreed to back his proposal to honour Cork-born Galvin for outstanding public service, his distinguished legal career and central role in transforming the State’s response to organised crime. “Barry Galvin helped change the way this country took on organised crime ... He brought the legal knowledge, determination and practical ability to help turn that principle into an organisation that could act. His contribution has made a lasting difference to Ireland, and it is fitting that his own city should recognise it.”READ MOREGalvin, while working as State solicitor for Cork city, went on The Late Late Show in 1992 and highlighted a gap in legislation which allowed Irish and foreign drug traffickers to live with impunity off the profits of their criminality.He told host Gay Byrne that 10 big drug dealers, driven out of Britain and the Netherlands, had taken up residence in the south of Ireland. He also spoke about how the south coast was open to traffickers landing their drugs in Ireland for transportation on to Britain and Europe.Four years later, the Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left coalition government established the bureau, based on an opposition Private Members’ Bill drawn up by the then Fianna Fáil justice spokesman John O’Donoghue with advice from the late senior counsel Eamon Leahy.The establishment of Cab by then minister for justice Nora Owen in October 1996 followed the murders of Det Garda Jerry McCabe by members of the Provisional IRA and journalist Veronica Guerin by criminals earlier that year.Boylan said those murders shocked the country and Galvin, as Cab’s first legal officer, was central to formulating and co-ordinating the State’s response to such lawlessness. He guided the bureau through its formative years from 1996 until 2003.“We remember Jerry McCabe and Veronica Guerin as people who went out to do their jobs and never came home. Their murders shook Ireland,” the lord mayor said. He said Galvin was “central to translating” the determination to stop those responsible for such violence into action and would be a “worthy recipient” of the freedom of Cork city. “Alongside his colleagues, he helped build a response that went after the money and challenged the belief that the proceeds of crime were beyond the State’s reach.”