The robbery of more than £100,000 from the Bank of Ireland yesterday represents one of the worst breaches of security at Dublin Airport in decades.
The fact that armed men could drive two cars to the departures area, block the road off and reverse another car through the bank's window at speed and then flee with bags of cash in the back seat, seems to have taken security authorities by surprise.
While the robbery was described as "daring", the reality is that it was carried out in an area which seemed to lack the level of security needed to prevent such raids.
It is obvious when the perpetrators studied the front of the airport, they identified a major weakness - the pane of glass which led straight into the back of the bank, where large foreign currency deposits are held. In an era when airports internationally have been subject to terrorist action, including an IRA mortar attack on London's Heathrow Airport in 1994, Dublin has been fortunate in suffering few major incidents.
The men involved in yesterday's robbery would have driven into the airport without passing any security barriers. The airport policeman standing outside a checkpoint box was the only security presence which faced them.
The policeman's duties are to ensure that traffic moves smoothly and people do not attempt to travel down the arrivals road, which is adjacent to the departures area. An airport source said yesterday vehicles were rarely stopped.
While there are plenty of security cameras dotted around the departures area, there are no airport police directly assigned to watch the bank.
Airport police are answerable to Aer Rianta and their spokesman said yesterday two airport police were patrolling "near" where the robbery took place. He said they held back onlookers, but could do little else because they were unarmed.
It was a "dangerous and volatile" situation, said the spokesman and had been handled professionally by the individuals concerned.
He pointed out that the airport policeman standing at the checkpoint had raised the alarm and put down a barrier to block the raiders escape. However, they avoided this by driving over a traffic island.
So with airport police powerless, the only other possible obstacle the raiders could have faced was the appearance of gardai.
While some Garda immigration officials are armed, the only other armed presence the airport can draw on is an armed unit, under the control of Santry Garda station, which regularly patrols around the airport.
When asked was this unit at the airport when the robbery took place, a Garda spokesman said it could not comment as this was an "operational matter".
There is a Garda station near the old airport terminal, but the spokesman declined to say how many gardai are normally on duty there or whether any of them have access to arms.
The overall body charged with airport security is the National Civil Aviation Security Committee, which includes officials from the Department of Justice, the Department of Public Enterprise, Aer Rianta and Garda and Army representatives.
However, a spokesman for the Department of Public Enterprise said last night this committee dealt with issues like hijackings and bomb threats and would not have considered the security of Bank of Ireland or other retail outlets. He said this was an operational matter for the Garda. i.
Either way, the raiders were not confronted by anyone and during the 21/2 minutes it took them to snatch the money, airport police and bystanders could only look on helplessly.
Garda sources said the raiders were most likely from north Dublin and while there was some confusion about the exact weapons they carried, they seemed to have one handgun and two sawn-off shotguns.