CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence will be used in the case against two men accused of the robbery in which Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe was shot dead, Dublin's Special Criminal Court has heard.
James Flynn, (32) originally from south Armagh and Brendan Treanor, (34) previously of Emer Terrace in Dundalk, Co Louth, are charged with the robbery of €7,000 at Lordship Credit Union in Bellurgan, Co Louth on January 25, 2013.
The pair are also charged with conspiring with Aaron Brady and others to enter a house with the intention of stealing car keys.
Brady (31) previously of New Road, Crossmaglen in Co Armagh, is serving a 40-year prison sentence having been found guilty of murdering Adrian Donohoe and of the burglary at Lordship.
Lorcan Staines SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said the prosecution would ask the court to draw inferences from phone contacts around the times of the burglaries between Mr Flynn, Mr Treanor and Aaron Brady.
He said inferences could also be drawn from the location of the cell sites their phones pinged off around the times when the burglaries happened.
Part of the evidence, counsel said, will be that a 'satnav' that had been in one car stolen in a creeper burglary was found by gardaí when they stopped and searched James Flynn's father Eugene's car at Dublin Airport in 2015.
Partially burned documents taken from a home in Cavan during another burglary in October 2012 were found in the house where Aaron Brady was living in March 2013, Mr Staines said.
Mr Staines said the prosecution accepts that the evidence in respect of each of the burglaries would not be sufficient to prosecute either accused in isolation. Taking all of the burglaries together, he said, "the pattern becomes clear in terms of the individuals involved in these highly similar crimes".
In relation to the robbery at Lordship Credit Union, Mr Staines said the evidence is circumstantial and the prosecution case will "stand or fall on the strength of many fine threads wound together."
The State, he said, would have to negate the statements from the accused in which they suggested that they had a "normal day of friendly association with each other and with Aaron Brady''.