Red-faced security company officials were last night investigating how £80,000 fell out of one of its vans on to a busy street in Cork city.
The Securicor van had called to a city centre bank and was on its way to another premises at Shandon Street early in the afternoon when the mishap occurred.
The route taken by the vehicle was subsequently scoured but the whereabouts of the cash was still unknown last night.
One theory is that as the van travelled from the city centre bank to Shandon Street it hit a bump on the road or encountered a pothole, which caused its rear door to fly open, depositing a white plastic bag marked "Bank of Ireland" on the road.
The van drove on, its occupants unaware that the payload had become considerably lighter. This was discovered when it stopped at Shandon Street.
The route through the city centre via Merchant's Quay and Kyrl's Quay at that time is an extremely busy one, with bumper-to-bumper cars and many pedestrians.
Someone may have seen the cash as a gift from the gods. It's not often that white plastic bags containing £80,000 in used, unmarked notes of varying denominations presents itself in this way.
Securicor, which has confirmed that it would be held liable for the money, is not at all amused.
One theory being examined, according to a spokesman, was whether a door on the van may have had a faulty lock.
It is understood that bags containing even more money were in the van at the time but the company said its policy was not to specify the amounts it carried.
The bad news is that it's not a case of "finders, keepers".
The law, said a senior Garda source, was that anyone who picked up the plastic bag and kept it was guilty of a crime known as larceny by finding.
The law requires that if the owner of the item you find can be discovered by taking "reasonable steps", then reasonable steps must be taken.
And with "Bank of Ireland" emblazoned on the plastic bag the probability is, unfortunately, that a court would regard that as a reasonable clue.
Just to be on the safe side, however, a Garda spokesman asked the finder, if he or she wouldn't mind, to hand the bag in to a Garda station.
"People hand in bikes and wallets all the time, why not a plastic bag?" he asked.
The answer, of course, is that a bike couldn't possibly brighten up your weekend like the contents of this bag.