Exactly 30 years ago yesterday, I stood alongside my colleague, Paul Williams, next to a distinctive red Opel Calibra on the Naas Road, on the outskirts of Dublin.

It was just after 1pm, on June 26, 1996.

Inside the car, slumped in the driver’s seat, was Veronica Guerin.

She had been shot several times.

Veronica was slain at the age of 36.

The pair of us were stunned beyond belief that this brave crime journalist had just been gunned down, in broad daylight, on a busy Dublin road at lunchtime.

Less than ten minutes earlier, Paul Williams and I had heard from detective contacts that Veronica had been shot – again.

I’ll always remember Paul turning to me and saying: ‘It’s different this time, Mick… She’s dead.’

We sped to the scene, not quite comprehending the magnitude of what had just happened. Our phones were hopping en route with more and more contacts ringing us with updates.

Only a few gardaí were there when we arrived. They were just about to put some cardboard over the window of the sports car. Veronica was still inside.

I remember Paul suddenly feeling unwell after seeing her, while I found it hard to talk. We couldn’t take in what had just happened. Sure, we had been shocked the previous year when Veronica had been shot in the leg. But this was murder.

Veronica was a crusading reporter but she was also a mother, a wife, a sister and a friend to so many. Now, she was gone – simply for doing her job.

I suddenly felt worried for Paul. He, too, was at the forefront of crime reporting. In an instant, our world had become a lot more dangerous. Veronica’s brutal killing turned out to be a watershed moment. The nation united in mourning as the political establishment finally woke up to the serious threat from organised crime. Gardaí were – at last – given the powers to go after the so-called ‘untouchables’ of the criminal underworld.

Still reeling as a force from the murder of one of their own, Detective Jerry McCabe, just over two weeks earlier, the gardaí went after John Gilligan’s gang in a way never seen before. Veronica’s legacy saw policing transformed as the newly formed Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) began to strip major gangsters of their ill-gotten gains. Three decades on, the CAB is still doing that today.

Veronica blazed a trail for all of us investigative journalists and changed the way the gardaí took on organised crime.

We will never forget her.