A young male cashier was escorted from the College Green branch offices in Dublin by plainclothes gardai over a week ago and is currently helping gardai with their enquiries. The Sunday Tribune understands that the scam was highly unusual and had never been detected before. It involved 'skimming' quantities of cash from customers who had large amounts of money in their accounts over an unknown period. The garda fraud squad and Bank of Ireland are investigating the matter.

Last week, the Sunday Tribune revealed details of the initial investigation. Since then, employees at College Green have been complaining about the way Bank of Ireland management has dealt with the case. Last week, four junior staff members with less than three years' service were interviewed by management and were not informed that they were entitled to union representation. A more senior employee of Bank of Ireland who contacted the Sunday Tribune said the four were being treated as "guilty by association", even though there is nothing to suggest the two female and two male employees had anything to do with the scam.

Three of the four will now be transferred to different branches. The anonymous official told the Sunday Tribune it was "the worst handling of any situation I have ever seen", and that the behaviour of management was tantamount to "bullying" and "intimidation".

The male cashier is now cooperating with gardai. The Sunday Tribune understands that the employee in question may have been threatened by a third party to continue to steal money. He had handed in his notice a week before he was suspended. Bank of Ireland refused to confirm whether his supervisor had also been transferred.

The bank is keen to deflect media attention and strongly warned staff against speaking to journalists. A Bank of Ireland spokeswoman confirmed to the Sunday Tribune that "there was an incident in College Green. It's under investigation and it's an internal matter as far as we're concerned." Regarding the recent staff transfers, the spokeswoman said: "As you can appreciate, the College Green branch is a very large branch, there are a lot of staff, and there is movement all the time."

The Irish Bank Officials Associations is in contact with Bank of Ireland regarding the case. "We have written to the bank on behalf on our members on the issue, " a spokesman said.

Last Thursday, a statement was read out to staff at College Green in an effort to calm discontent among employees over how their colleagues were being treated. It is against union law for bank management to refuse union members representation when they are being interviewed in investigations of this kind. However, a growing number of junior employees in Irish banks are not union members.