The Revenue Department in Ireland employs a large number of individuals – and not just to make sure people pay their taxes, but also to combat smuggling.
One of the Department’s more effective staff members in this regard is Toby, the nearly four-year-old sniffer dog.
Just this week, Toby managed to sniff out a quarter-of-a-million euro in cash, and €2 million worth of cigarettes.
Newstalk reporter Henry McKean went to meet him and his handlers in a package aired on Moncrieff.
National detector dog programme manager Alan Foley said that Toby is one of 26 dogs employed by Revenue.
“We have all our dogs which are stationed in ports, airports and mail centres around the country,” he said.
“Toby is a spaniel, he’s almost four-years of age; he’s fairly young as a dog.
“He only joined us two years ago, he came in, we would have started a selection process when we needed a new dog.”
View this post on Instagram
Mr Foley said that sniffer dogs can be sourced from shelters across Ireland or the UK, and would typically be gun-breeds.
“That would be Labradors and Spaniels,” he said.
“What we’re looking for then, we actually have a number of dogs which are from rescue centres as well as which are ex-gun dogs.
“Some gun fogs, for whatever reason, whether they’re shy of the gunshot, it doesn’t mean they’re a bad dog, they’re still more than an effective good dog to work for us on it.
“We’re looking for the dogs then on it which we don’t really change their abilities, we sort of focus their natural abilities – they're hunting dogs, so what we do it we actually change the target.”
Newstalk reporter Henry McKean (L), National detector dog programme manager Alan Foley (R) and Toby the detector dog (centre).According to Mr Foley, Toby is trained to detect cannabis, as well as large amounts of tobacco and cash.
“Toby is trained to detect what we could call thresholding,” he said.
“If you were travelling through an airport on it, he would ignore everyone that is carrying money through on it; if you're carrying a couple hundred quid.
“He’s looking for large amounts, like a wad of cash, something that someone is concealing to bring out of the country on it for proceeds of crime.”
Mr Foley said Toby is trained to detect tobacco in a similar way.
Main image: Toby the detector dog. Image via Henry McKean/Newstalk.
