AN POST cash deliveries - the dole on Thursday, pensions on Friday and children's allowances ion the first Tuesday of every month - are the most obvious and vulnerable targets for armed robbers, particularly republican paramilitaries.
In rural areas the van carrying the money and its escort travel from a cash centre to outlying villages and is a vulnerable target. Between £50,000 and £100,000 can be carried.
In Dublin, particularly in the large suburbs in the south and west, An Post cash deliveries can carry up to £500,000.
The escort until the early 1980s was an unmarked Garda Special Branch car with two officers. The passenger carried an Uzi submachinegun and both officers had standard issue Smith and Wesson revolvers.
In September 1984 Garda Frank Hand was shot dead at Drumree, Co Meath, while escorting a cash delivery to post offices. Immediately after, security for the escorts was increased.
Garda Hand was married only five weeks when he was killed by three IRA members, Thomas Eccles and Brian McShane, from Dundalk, and Patrick McPhillips, from Co Armagh. All three were sentenced to death for the capital murder of Garda Hand, but this was later commuted to 40 years' imprisonment by the Government. The death penalty has since been abolished.
The anger at Garda Hand's murder is still felt by gardai. Last year, the Garda Representative Association (GRA) protested when the three began to receive parole releases from prison.
The killing of Garda Hand, who was 27, underlined Garda antipathy towards illegal republican organisations. Garda Hand's widow was pregnant when he was killed and their daughter is still attending school in Co Kildare.
After Garda Hand's death, a second "roaming" Special Branch car, also with two armed officers, was brought into operation. It provided route clearance, surveillance and back up for the unmarked patrol ear which accompanied the security van.
The roaming car would be expected to visit post offices before the cash van and its immediate escort arrived. Since its introduction no gardai have been killed on cash escorts. The last officer to be killed, Sgt Patrick Morrissey, was pursuing two republicans after they robbed a post office in Co Louth, when he was shot in June 1985.
In some areas where risks were seen to have been reduced the second squad car was dispensed with last year as part of a decrease in security measures after the IRA ceasefire and also resource reallocation, largely in response to political demands for more gardai to be made available to fight drugs and related crime.
It is understood the ear carrying Det Garda Jerry McCabe, who was killed, and Det Garda Ben O'Sullivan, who was injured, was not accompanied yesterday. However, local senior officers made it clear there was a high level of Garda mobile patrolling throughout the Limerick area in response to the heightened threat of an attempted IRA robbery on the cash delivery days.