Many of the most spectacular large-scale armed robberies of recent years have been carried out by members of the same highly effective north Dublin gang which seized an estimated £2.8 million in cash from the Brinks-Allied cash depot at Clonshaugh near Dublin airport in January 1995. That represented the largest criminal haul in the history of the State.
Before that the largest armed robbery had been a raid on the AIB cash clearing centre at Lisduggan industrial estate in Waterford in January 1992, which netted just under £2.7 million. This was also linked to the Dublin gang.
Five years earlier, in January 1987, the same gang escaped with £2.1 million from a Securicor van hijacked outside a bank at Marino in Dublin.
The investigation of these two robberies resulted in two minor convictions and the return of just over £400,000 of the cash stolen in Marino.
Other major armed robberies which remain unsolved include the robbery of £400,000 from a Brinks Mat van in Co Clare in 1978 by the Irish National Liberation Army; the £2 million jewellery robbery from a wholesaler in Harold's Cross, Dublin, in 1983; and the robbery of paintings valued in tens of millions of pounds from the Beit collection in Russborough House, Co Wicklow, in 1986. However all the main works have since been recovered.
The main organiser of this raid was believed to be Martin Cahill, the south Dublin criminal who was shot dead by republican paramilitaries in August 1994.
Gardai believe the murders of Mel Cox in Blanchardstown in 1987 and Patrick McDonald in 1991 were the work of the gang which carried out the BrinksAllied robbery. Both men were believed to have been former associates of the gang.
In recent years paramilitary groups have tended to be much less successful than the Brinks-Allied gang when it comes to major robberies.
Last May a member of the "Real IRA" from Dublin, Ronan McLoughlin, was shot dead by gardai during an abortive armed robbery on a security van on the Dublin-Wexford road near Ashford, Co Wicklow.
The six men were armed with i. The men were armed with an improvised rocket launcher, an AK47 assault rifle, two shotguns and two handguns. The group involved was believed to have been involved in at least one other armed robbery attempt in Dublin in 1996. On that occasion they were also intercepted by gardai and two men and two women were arrested.
The Provisional IRA was also involved in several armed robbery attempts in the Republic in the early 1990s. Six IRA members were arrested by gardai during one attempted armed raid in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, in 1991.
In July 1996 more than £2 million worth of computer components was taken from an articulated lorry and its driver handcuffed to a tree in Dublin's Phoenix Park. It was the largest robbery of its kind in the State and was believed to be the work of the Brinks-Allied gang or another gang in the west of the city.