GARDAI now believe that the armed gang which stole about £100,000 from a cash depot in Waterford on Saturday broke into the premises while it was unoccupied, shortly before the Securicor van carrying the cash arrived.
One of the senior investigating, gardai, Supt Sean Camon, said last night that it appeared no Securicor staff had been on duty in the cash depot prior to the arrival of the van.
The gang had breached a security fence and unscrewed a metal panel in a wall at the rear of the building to gain access to the premises.
The modus operandi of the gang bears striking similarities to two previous raids on cash depositories - at the Brinks Allied premises in Dublin last year and at an AIB depot in Waterford in 1992. No one has been charged in connection with either of the previous two robberies.
Although gardai set up checkpoints around Waterford shortly after the alarm was raised at 6 p.m. on Saturday, as of early this morning there had been no arrests. Last night, Securicor rejected suggestions that security at its premises was inadequate.
The depot shares an outer fence with a number of other buildings at the Ballinaneashagh industrial estate on the main road between Waterford and Cork. The outer fence was intact yesterday, but there was a gap in the inner fence.
The Securicor van completed its collection of cash from a number of commercial premises around Waterford city and returned to the depot shortly before 6 p.m. Although gardai would not officially confirm that it was escorted by armed detectives, it is understood that an armed guard usually accompanies any sum over £50,000 and that gardai leave the scene once a security van has entered a secure area".
It was unclear last night whether all three members of the gang were waiting inside the depot at the time the van was driven through the security gate in the fence and into the building.
Two Securicor staff where in the van were unloading cash from it when they were confronted by a man dressed in black, wearing a balaclava and carrying what appeared to be a machine gun. The staff were ordered to lie on the floor before the two other raiders appeared. The gang grabbed eight leather bags containing about £100,000 and escaped.
No shots were fired and no one was injured in the raid, although the Securicor staff were said to have been badly shaken.
Shortly after the raid a wine coloured car was seen heading towards Limerick at high speed, but gardai did not know if this was a getaway vehicle.
The Securicor depot is only half a mile from the AIB cash holding centre, from which £2.7 million was stolen in January, 1992. The gang which carried out the AIB raid had broken through the roof of the building. Their haul was the biggest in the history of the State until January of last year, when an estimated £2.8 million was taken from the Brinks Allied cash depot in Dublin after security fences outside the building were partly dismantled.
In each case, a security van was being unloaded when the raiders struck.
Those raids are believed to have been the work of a Dublin criminal gang, although IRA involvement has not been ruled out.
Supt Camon, who is leading the hunt for the gang, appealed for anyone who saw anything suspicious near the Securicor premises to come forward.
Meanwhile, Mr Martin Cullen, the Fianna Fail Waterford TD, claimed that cutbacks in Garda overtime could be affecting escorts for security vans. Cutting overtime seemed to be "a factor" in determining the extent to which cash in transit operations are monitored, he said.