A judge has ordered the forfeiture of a .44 Magnum “Dirty Harry” handgun that was discovered in a Dublin postal depot after a shipping blunder.

The revolver, which gained most of its fame from the 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood, had been purchased by English antique dealer and huntsman Colin Brummitt.

It was mailed from the United States, but a mix-up led to it being sent to Ireland.

Officials seized it at the Dublin Parcel Hub, Centre Oak Road, Knockmitten, Dublin 12 last year. Revenue made an application before Dublin District Court today to have it forfeited.

Mr Brummitt, of March Road, Turves, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, initially indicated he was going to challenge the civil proceedings in the hope that Judge Anthony Halpin would make his day.

However, he withdrew his objection shortly before the hearing.

On 13 February 2024, a customs and excise officer was on duty at Dublin Parcel Hub, Centre Oak Road, Knockmitten, Dublin 12, when a parcel dispatched from the US addressed to the respondent was X-rayed and found to contain the handgun.

‘A very substantial firearm’

Solicitor Kieran Binchy, who moved the application, told Judge Halpin that “the item in question in this case, and it’s worth setting it out briefly. It’s a .44 Magnum, which I only know in my own capacity as being the gun that Dirty Harry uses in the Clint Eastwood film. It’s a very substantial firearm”.

“You’ve clearly done your research,” Judge Halpin said, after querying whether the weapon was real or a replica.

He was told the gun was genuine and had turned up in the Irish postal service to the surprise of everyone, including Mr Brummitt.

Mr Binchy said the label stated it was going to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and it was mistakenly sent to Ireland.

The solicitor said: “We have some of the strictest gun laws for historical reasons in this country, and they must be obeyed when the item enters this country.”

He explained that it was designated an illegal firearm.

However, Mr Brummitt wrote to the Revenue acknowledging that there were different laws in Ireland, although he believed it was legal in the UK.

He had wanted to contest the case, but shortly before the hearing, he emailed to say: “He can see which way this is going and he is not going to turn up.”

The court heard that he paid around £900, and Revenue gave it a value of €1,500.

The application was made pursuant to Sections 19(4) and 20(2) of the Customs Act, 2015, which provide for the forfeiture and condemnation of the gun.

The solicitor said a customs official was available to give more information about the legalities of the .44 Magnum.

But Judge Halpin declined, saying, “Dirty Harry did it for me”, and he granted the order sought.

Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has said he was “surprised” that the Irish Prison Service paid almost €25,000 to The 2 Johnnies comedy duo for a podcast as part of a drive to recruit more prison officers.

The Minister said it was “a lot of money to spend on a podcast for recruitment” when he was asked about the payment after it emerged on Wednesday.

The IPS confirmed that a fee of €20,000, plus €4,600 in VAT, was agreed with the Tipperary entertainers for the show.

The sponsored hour-long podcast featured prison staff speaking about life working in an Irish jail and the advantages of a job in the penal system.

“I’m surprised that amount of money was spent. It doesn’t strike me as a necessary expenditure when you consider all the obligations that rest on the prison service,” said Mr O’Callaghan.

It has also emerged that the comedy act received no payment from An Garda Síochána for a similar podcast with two garda recruits.

Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly said the Garda “did the same podcast” last year, when Garda members were interviewed by The 2 Johnnies “and we didn’t pay anything for it”.

He added it was “really useful for us … it was a really good audience for us” at a time when the Garda was running its own recruitment campaign.

The Minister was asked about the payment while attending the annual conference of the Association of Garda Superintendents (AGS) in Trim, Co Meath.

He said he went to the National Ploughing Championships last week to launch the new Garda recruitment competition at no expense and that the commissioner does this promotion work for recruitment too.

Mr O’Callaghan said public money had “to be spent efficiently and carefully”.

Asked about recent public order incidents in Dublin, Mr O’Callaghan and Mr Kelly said a new plan to increase the number of gardaí on the streets would yield clear results before Christmas.

They both rejected the allegation Dublin is unsafe or is run by street gangs in places.

Reacting to the two serious stabbings that took place in Dublin over the weekend, including a gang attack that left a 17-year-old with up to 20 wounds, Mr O’Callaghan said Dublin was “a large international capital city”.

“We are going to get some criminal activity in a city of that size. I am also aware attacks get a lot of national coverage,” Mr O’Callaghan said.

Mr O’Callaghan said the victims of assaults and other crimes, including the man and teenager attacked in Dublin at the weekend, would say they were not safe in Dublin, but overall, he believed the city was safe.

He said the latest data from the Garda and the HSE showed that knife crime and injuries from knife assaults were down and insisted that gardaí “have access to and control all parts of Dublin city”.

Mr Kelly, who took over as Garda Commissioner from Drew Harris last month, said there was no part of Dublin that was a no-go area run or even dominated by criminals.

“Dublin is a large city with 1¾ million, approximately, people in it. In any large city, you’re going to have lots of incidents,” he said, though he accepted some people felt unsafe.

A high-visibility operation was in place in the areas policed by Store Street, Pearse Street and Kevin Street Garda stations in Dublin city, having been rolled out by Assistant Commissioner Paul Cleary. This included far more frontline uniform gardaí on the beat, which was now being extended to other parts of the city and would become very obvious in the period to Christmas.

AGS president Supt Colm Murphy said that the new “operating policing model”, which has amalgamated several Garda divisions into much larger “super divisions”, was now fully rolled out.

However, the promised increase in manpower required to staff the additional roles for superintendents had not been delivered. This has resulted in “weakened links” between Garda members of all ranks and the communities they policed.

The superintendents want numbers in their ranks increased from 168 at present to at least 190. Mr Kelly said he was examining the numbers and believed more superintendents posts were needed.

There are about 14,400 members of all ranks in the Garda and Mr Kelly said he hoped the force would reach 15,000 next year.

The process of joining the Garda had been expedited with a much shorter period between being offered a place in the force and starting training.