Bank heist - Republicans must end criminal link

IT would be impossible to exaggerate the political fallout of yesterday’s dramatic claim by Northern Ireland police chief Hugh Orde that the IRA were behind last month’s £26.5 million bank raid in Belfast.

A major body blow has been delivered to the troubled power-sharing agreement and relations between Sinn Féin and the DUP, already fraught over the IRA’s refusal to sign up to end all criminality, have deteriorated even further, if that were possible.

Sinn Féin and the IRA both deny the Orde claim. But the Chief Constable of the PSNI has given voice to widespread suspicions that the Provos were behind the biggest bank robbery on these islands.