The PSNI Chief Constable, Mr Hugh Orde, is to weigh up whether he will publicly state before the end of this week who he believes was responsible for the £22 million Northern Bank robbery.
As unionist politicians in particular demand that he declare whether or not the IRA was behind the huge Christmas-week robbery in central Belfast, Mr Orde is preparing to meet the chief and deputy chief of the North's Policing Board, Sir Desmond Rea and Mr Denis Bradley, on Friday.
This will be ahead of a full meeting of the board on January 20th where Mr Orde knows he will face a tough grilling from board members on how the PSNI is handling the robbery investigation, and whether it could have done more to prevent the raid.
The Chief Constable, in the face of growing political pressure, is now deliberating whether after Friday's meeting he should hold a press conference to state definitively if he believes the IRA carried out Ireland's biggest bank robbery or whether other paramilitary or organised crime gangs were responsible, or whether he just does not know who did it.
The west Belfast focus of police searches over the past week or more indicates that republican paramilitaries are the main suspects.
In these circumstances chief suspicion falls on the IRA because, if a west Belfast organisation was responsible, it would have the main capability to carry out such a robbery. A senior IRA source denied it was involved, and the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, said the west Belfast searches were politically motivated against republicans and designed to damage the political process. Nonetheless the PSNI has said that the IRA and four other paramilitary and criminal gangs are the chief suspects.
