A BUILDER has been jailed for 25 years for his part in a multi-million pound enterprise to smuggle Columbian drugs into the Republic of Ireland.

Father-of-three Joe Daly, aged 41, of Carrisbrooke Avenue, Bexley, showed no reaction as Judge Sean O'Donnahain passed sentence on him and his two co-defendants at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

Daly, together with Perry Wharrie, aged 48, from Loughton, Essex, and Martin Wanden, aged 45, of no fixed address, had each pleaded not guilty to three charges of possessing cocaine for sale or supply in Dunlough Bay, County Cork, on July 2 last year.

Wharrie and Wanden were each sentenced to 30 years in jail.

A jury took seven-and-a-half hours to reach their verdict after a 42-day trial.

Jurors had heard how rescue services and Irish police the Garda found 62 bales of exceptionally pure cocaine floating in the sea off the Cork coast after they were alerted to a sinking boat.

The drugs, with a street value of £350m, are the largest ever drugs seizure in Ireland.

A rigid inflatable boat (RIB) was bringing the drugs ashore after rendezvousing with a catamaran which had brought them from the Caribbean.

The RIB sank in heavy seas.

It had been fitted with 200 horsepower engines which were too powerful for the boat and then failed because someone had used diesel instead of petrol.

A fourth man, 24-year-old Gerard Hagan from Liverpool, who pleaded guilty to a charge of drug possession, swam ashore and raised the alarm.

Hagan will be sentenced in November.

Wanden was rescued from the sea, while Daly and Wharrie were caught after fleeing the scene and hiding in a cattle shed for two days.

After the guilty verdict, it was revealed four other men involved in the enterprise are still on the run from police and the feared Medellin drugs cartel in Columbia, which supplied the drugs.

The court also learned Wharrie faces a European arrest warrant hearing on Wednesday by Britain.

He was released from a resettlement prison in Goudhurst, Kent, in 2005, after serving 17 years for the murder of off-duty policeman Frank Mason in Hampshire in 1988, and has broken the terms of his parole.

Meanwhile, Wanden's palatial home in South Africa is being auctioned by the country's criminal assets bureau.

The trial involved 200 witnesses and a trail stretching across seven countries on three continents and featured false passports, aliases, GPS satellite locators, secure communications equipment and a series of hired properties and vehicles.

Judge O'Donnahain told the trio they were willing "to deal in death and destruction for profit" and would now have to face the consequences.