Ram gang may have slipped net

An armed gang that stole two old masters worth more than £3m from an art collection in Co Wicklow were tonight thought to have slipped out of the area - despite having to flee on foot.

The three men who staged a ram raid on Russborough House, 20 miles from Dublin in Co Wicklow, failed in a bid to hijack a car at gunpoint after they set fire to their own getaway vehicle minutes after the robbery.

They were last seen running from the scene.

A huge police dragnet was thrown over the entire area, but it later appeared that the thieves had escaped.

The gang got away with Gainsborough’s Madam Baccelli, which has an estimated value of £2m and Belotto’s Scene of Florence.

The masked intruders burst their way into the house through the front door with a jeep-style vehicle at lunchtime.

Garda Chief Superintendent Sean Feely said: ‘‘They fired a shot in an attempt to hijack a car, but the motorist refused to hand over his vehicle.

‘‘There were people in the house at the time of the robbery, but no one was hurt.’’

For the stately home at the centre of the crime, it was a case of history repeating itself, as Russborough has been the scene of two other major art thefts.

In 1974, an IRA gang that included British heiress Dr Rose Dugdale, stole 19 paintings - then valued at £8m - from Russborough, then the home of former Conservative MP Sir Alfred Beit, a member of the de Beers diamond family, and his wife.

The couple were bound and gagged during the raid and the pictures were later found in Co Cork. Dugdale and others involved in the raid were afterwards jailed for the robbery.

In 1986, a 13-strong gang headed by Dublin criminal boss Martin Cahill - known as The General and later shot dead by the IRA as he sat in his car in Dublin - stole 18 works, including some of those taken and recovered in the earlier incident.

The paintings that were taken then included works by Vermeer, Metsu, Goya, Gainsborough and Rubens.

All but three of those pictures turned up over a period of years in a number of locations, including London and Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey after apparently unsuccessful attempts to sell them.

The Gainsborough stolen today was also taken in the 1986 raid.

The Beit collection was made over to the Irish nation by the family in the 1990s, and many of the works are still on show at Russborough.

Raymond Keaveney, the Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, described the latest theft as ‘‘an outrage’’.

Tonight it looked as though the raiders would face familiar problems in disposing of the 18th century old masters.

An art expert in Dublin said: ‘‘They are not sellable on the open market. Maybe the thieves are hoping a reward will be offered.’’

Mr Feely, who was also involved in the 1986 robbery inquiry, added: ‘‘I would think they would be impossible to sell as they are so well known.’’

He also said he had spoken to Lady Beit, Sir Alfred’s widow, who was at her home at the time of the crime, and she was ‘‘in very good form, considering what happened’’.