Security risks ‘taken to suit banks’

SECURITY companies have been exposing themselves to risk for years in order to suit the opening hours of some banks, it was claimed yesterday.

Multi-million euro cash deliveries to other parts of the country are sometimes collected the previous night from bank cash centres. This is because the banks don’t open early enough in the morning of the actual delivery, security companies claim.

Cash in transit companies say they are exposed to raids after they collect the money and when they leave their depot in the morning.

“We do it to facilitate the banks, and it has been going on for years,” said one security source. “The banks don’t open up early enough to get country runs moving. It’s a long-running problem. The banks don’t want to pay for anything.”

It emerged yesterday the Brinks Allied van raided on Wednesday morning had collected money from a bank on Tuesday night instead of Wednesday morning as scheduled.

It had done this to facilitate the bank’s operations, as the bank could not open early enough on Wednesday morning.

The van was supposed to meet its garda/army escort at a pre-arranged rendezvous point at Foster Place, near Bank of Ireland on College Green.

The van was due to collect further cash from Bank of Ireland.

The garda escort was not aware that cash had been collected the night before.

Garda sources said that as far as they knew the van was supposed to be empty and that cash was due to be collected in College Green and other locations. A senior source said gardaí were not aware of the practice among delivery companies of collecting cash the night before.

He said garda/army escorts typically meet the vans at their depot if they are going on country runs.

“If they already have the cash loaded and are going on country runs, we would usually go to the depot,” said a source.

He said they should have been told by the company on Tuesday night that the money had been collected and the escort would have gone straight out to Clonshaugh in the morning.

He said only certain deliveries are escorted and this is determined at a weekly meeting with the security companies, banks, the gardaí and the army.

The escorts are chosen on the basis of risk-profiling, cash threshold and intelligence.

Security company sources claim they are not getting sufficient escort cover with as little as one in ten deliveries being covered.

Both the security industry and the gardaí have called on the banks to contribute more money towards escorts and to invest money in new security systems that remove the access to cash from security staff. This is all the more so given a huge increase in the number of ATMs to be serviced by the delivery companies.

The Irish Bankers Federation (IBF) said it had no knowledge of operational security matters.

Felix O’Regan of the IBF pointed out that the banks contributed e6m towards escorts each year, around half of the total cost.

“It’s a very significant contribution in light of the fact that at least half, if not more, of the money in these cash transits isn’t bank money at all, it’s money to meet the requirement of State for payments, money going to large retail outlets and post offices.”

He said it was hard to see how the level of investment by banks in security would prevent the lapse in procedures in Wednesday’s heist.

ATMs

* The number of ATMs in the country has increased from 853 in 1995, to 1,160 in 2000, to 1,588 in 2003.

* The value of ATM transactions grew from €4.7bn in 1995, to €11.4bn in 2000 to €18.2bn in 2003.

* The average ATM dispensed €11.46m a year or €220,000 a week.

* Around one-in-ten ATM cash deliveries are given a garda/army escort.