The Gardai last night identified the armed robber shot dead during a confrontation with gardai as a member of one of the splinter republican groups which has been trying to undermine the political process in the North.
The man, who has been living in the Ballymun area of Dublin, is said to have belonged to the Continuity IRA, the military group associated with the small political party, Republican Sinn Fein. Republican Sinn Fein consistently denies any link.
He was killed in what gardai described as an intense exchange of gunfire between themselves and six armed robbers on the main Dublin-Wexford road yesterday afternoon.
Earlier the six men, who were armed with an improvised rocket-launcher, an AK47 assault rifle, two shotguns and two handguns, had set up a roadblock to stop a security van.
The group responsible for the incident is thought to have been involved in at least one other armed robbery attempt in Dublin two years ago. On that occasion they were again intercepted by gardai, and two men and two women were arrested. They are still in prison.
The Continuity IRA has also been responsible for a number of bomb attacks in the North. They last bombed a disco in Enniskillen in February, and a month later gardai in Cavan intercepted a bomb near Redhills, Co Cavan.
The group split from the main Sinn Fein/IRA movement in 1986 when the RSF president, Mr Ruairi O Bradaigh, led a walk-out from the Sinn Fein ardfheis. Its first serious attack was in July 1996 when it blew up the Killyhevlin Hotel, outside Enniskillen.