A former head of security at the Northern Bank in Belfast said the £26.5 million alleged IRA robbery could not have taken place under the former security arrangements at the bank.
Mr Hugh Conkey, who worked for 18 years at the Northern Bank headquarters where the robbery took place, said he left the bank after it decided to replace in-house security, of which he was in charge, with outside security.
"It would never have taken place with the procedures we had in place," he told UTV's Insight programme last night. He said he was informed the changes were made to save £100,000 a year over a five-year period.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin yesterday urged the Government to block attempts to impose Independent Monitoring Commission sanctions on republicans.
Mr Gerry Kelly, a senior negotiator and North Belfast Assembly member, called on the Taoiseach to act on his claim that he opposed penalties levied on Sinn Féin following the Northern Bank robbery.
"If Bertie Ahern is against sanctions then the [Irish Government] needs to do something about that and should say to the British 'we will not accept sanctions'," he said yesterday.
Mr Kelly was vociferous in his opposition to the Independent Monitoring Commission, whose report on the bank robbery is expected to be published tomorrow.
"Sanctions has been tried before," he said. "It doesn't work. Exclusion has been tried before, criminalisation has been tried before - all these have been tried before." He said it was not good enough for Mr Ahern to proclaim his opposition to sanctions against Sinn Féin.
"The Irish Government, as a co-equal partner, should block sanctions by the IMC because the IMC does have a representative of the Irish Government on it, and was set up by the two governments to take sanctions against Sinn Féin. It was set up as a sop to unionists."
He warned: "If the IMC want to make victims out of our voters I will robustly and strongly defend their right and our mandate."
Mr Kelly again rejected the assessment by the Garda and the PSNI that the IRA was behind December's £26.5 million robbery, and added that neither the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, nor Mr Martin McGuinness knew in advance of the robbery.
"Neither of those are fact, in fact they are absolutely wrong," he said.
Sinn Féin doubts whether the Taoiseach will do anything more than voice opposition to sanctions. Mr Kelly said Irish Government opposition to the suspension of Stormont was not supported by action.
"We have had situations before with the suspension of the institutions, for instance, where the Irish Government said publicly they were against it but frankly did not do a lot to stop the British suspending the institutions," he said.
"The Taoiseach now says he is opposed to sanctions. I hope he will follow that through. But I am doubtful based on the history of the suspension of the institutions. We need it blocked by the Irish Government. We are co-equal partners in this process." He said that IMC penalties would "hurt" Sinn Féin.
Despite the political fallout from the robbery, Mr Kelly said he was sure the US administration would not respond by shunning Sinn Féin representatives at the White House during St Patrick's week next month
"I met the State Department when I went over last week. They said they had no intentions of changing the normal arrangements," Mr Kelly said.
Meanwhile Mr David Burnside, the Ulster Unionist MP for South Antrim, yesterday called for the British government to take a stronger stance against the IRA.