The armour-plated van left Brinks Allied’s north Dublin depot at about 7.30am and made an unscheduled stop at a nearby Maxol station, where a uniformed guard stepped out to buy a cup of coffee. The shocked employee was accosted by a lone gunman, who pushed him back into the vehicle and ordered the driver to a nearby sports field, where he and the driver were forced to hand over €2.4m in used, untraceable notes.

The gang had executed the well-organised heist in just 15 minutes, but the fallout from the March 2005 robbery is still reverberating more than a year later after the media, government ministers and the banks had a field day, using the coffee stop as a stick to beat the cash-in-transit (CIT) industry for shabby work practices.

A spate of such raids in 2004 and early 2005 prompted an unprecedented garda crackdown on Dublin’s criminal gangs and the high-visibility tactics were repaid with a dramatic fall in armed robberies on security vans. After this lull, the storm has now broken with full force over the industry again with six armed robberies — some successful, some not — on CIT vehicles in the past month alone.

Last year, 200 security vehicles transported €150 billion around the republic, according to Securicor figures. Some 1,000 full-time employees also handled 128,000 tons of coins and storage depots held 75m coins of various denominations.

Secure transit is pivotal to the smooth operation of an economy that continues to embrace cash more than any other country in the European Union. The cashless society is a myth, particularly where Ireland is concerned. In 2001, almost €5 billion worth of notes and coins was in circulation. By 2005, this figure had grown to almost €13 billion.

THE CIT sector may be a key component in the cash-distribution chain, but for organised criminals it is also the weakest link. The industry has now threatened to withdraw its services entirely, leaving the government with no alternative but to sort out the problems or contemplate nationalisation.

Earlier this month a lone gunman walked away with €800,000 from an unmarked security vehicle after holding up the two-man crew and taking the cash, contained in a sports holdall, from the safe.

The apparent ease of this raid prompted a furious Michael McDowell, the justice minister, to summon the heads of the main CIT firms to a meeting to discuss “serious lapses” in the standards of a voluntary code of practice agreed last year in the wake of the Maxol raid.

But far from receiving cowed excuses, the justice minister was met with belligerent warnings that the private-security sector was in danger of being driven out of the business.

“We told the minister we had taken a tremendous mauling from our insurance companies over the past few years; we are nearly banjaxed by the amount of attacks and because we are covering all of the hits, nobody is making money in our industry,” said one of those present at the meeting, speaking on the basis of anonymity. “We told him that unless the banks took on a share of the responsibility and we received more protection, then he or one of his successors would have to consider nationalising the industry in a few years’ time because our parent companies were not going to keep wearing the losses.”

McDowell heard claims that the banks, the CIT companies’ main customers, had shown indifference because the security companies carry the can for any raids in the form of higher insurance premiums.

To make matters worse, while companies were being asked to invest heavily in new equipment and training to meet proposed new licensing standards, the banks were paying less now for CIT services than in 2003.

“The banks should be paying more,” said Kevin McMahon, Siptu security branch secretary. “How can companies be expected to upgrade security standards, communications systems and training when their customers are driving down your prices and the state removes itself from responsibility of this vital service?” Brinks Ireland has changed half of its 56 vehicles over the past 18 months. Capital expenditure represents 20% of the Irish subsidiary’s €12m turnover. Securicor Ireland told a conference in Dublin last November that it had spent €14.5m over the past five years upgrading its equipment and processes.