Security is to be strengthened at Dublin Airport after it was seriously breached yesterday in an armed robbery when more than £100,000 of mainly foreign currency was taken from a branch of Bank of Ireland.
Armed gardai do not appear to have been in the vicinity when the raid took place at approximately 5.45 a.m. and two airport police who arrived on the scene did not intervene as they were unarmed.
Garda sources said the three men responsible were believed to be part of a north Dublin gang involved in previous armed robberies. They ruled out any paramilitary involvement but said the gang had carried out a professional operation, most likely using sawn-off shotguns and a handgun.
The raiders drove two cars - a metallic grey five series BMW and a black or dark blue Toyota sports car - to the departures area. After three attempts the BMW was reversed into the window of the bank and two of the men ran inside.
Four staff members who were counting their opening balances scattered when the men appeared. The raiders quickly gathered up large amounts of notes and threatened a woman staff member who attempted to leave by a front door.
The raid took two and a half minutes to complete and the two men joined the third who waited beside the Toyota. He had a brief altercation with a taxi driver whose taxi was blocked in. The raider threw the taxi keys over a wall and threatened the driver with a handgun.
As the Toyota sped away an airport policeman lowered a security barrier at the exit from the departures area but the men drove across a traffic island at speed and avoided it.
The BMW was stolen at St Vincent's Hospital, Elm Park, Dublin, recently. A car believed to be the Toyota was found burned out in an area known as Nags Head near Balbriggan, north Dublin, yesterday afternoon.
When asked if there was an armed Garda presence at Dublin Airport during the raid, a Garda spokeswoman declined to comment, as this was "an operational matter".
The body responsible for overall airport security - the National Civil Aviation Security Committee - said last night it developed strategies to deal with hijackings and bomb threats but had no function in relation to the security of banks or other retail outlets. "That kind of thing is a matter for the i," Garda," said a spokesman.
While about 300 airport police come under the control of Aer Rianta and are responsible for the day-to-day security of the airport, none of them is armed. About 24 of them were on duty when the raid took place.
An Aer Rianta spokesman said he could not give details of how security would be strengthened, but said "extra bodies" would be assigned to patrol the area where the Bank of Ireland branch is located.
The incident was recorded on closed-circuit television cameras operating on the departures ramp, but as the men were masked this may not yield much information.
Although the airport is normally quiet at this time of the morning, ground staff were checking in passengers for a number of flights to London, and dealing with arrivals on the floor below.
The bank's bureau de change is situated next to check-in area one. More than 100 passengers, travelling to London-Gatwick and Zurich, and staff saw one of the robbers "pushing around" a woman bank worker, witnesses said.
The raiders were described by onlookers as "big, broad and heavy" as they were seen scrambling to grab the money from the cashiers' desks.