GARDAÍ ARE trying to establish the cause of a fire that destroyed a well-known public house following an armed raid at the premises.
The incident unfolded in the early hours of yesterday morning when about €50,000 was taken from a safe at the Players Lounge, Fairview, Dublin, by an armed gang who threatened the bar manager and tied him up.
After the robbery, fire broke out in at least two areas of the pub. The flames quickly took hold, gutting the large lounge area of the well-known north Dublin establishment and causing extensive damage to the second storey of the building.
The pub is popular with supporters of Glasgow Celtic FC and had held a “rebel song festival” for the fans over the weekend to coincide with a trip to Dublin by Celtic to play in a pre-season international mini-tournament.
Gardaí are working on the theory that the pub was targeted by a gang who knew the takings from the busy weekend would still be on the premises.
The bar manager was the only person there when the four-man gang gained entry at about 2.20am via the rear entrance, off the Esmond Avenue laneway that runs alongside the pub.
The manager told gardaí that the men were masked and that at least one of them was armed with a handgun. He has told gardaí that the men demanded to know where the pub’s safe was, before taking him to the pub’s office and demanding the safe be opened.
The bar manager was tied up by the gang during the incident before the raiders left with an estimated €50,000 in takings.
Fire then broke out in at least two areas of the pub, gutting the downstairs sports lounge which had been installed when the pub was bought by publican John Stokes (54) and extensively renovated about four years ago.
The bar manager who was tied up by the gang is Paul Byrne, Mr Stokes’s brother-in-law.
The owner’s son is the Irish soccer international Anthony Stokes. The 23-year-old plays his club football with Glasgow Celtic and was in Dublin at the weekend with the team for the Dublin Super Cup pre-season friendly mini-tournament.
Anthony Stokes was socialising in the pub on Monday night just hours before the robbery and fire.
The pub was sealed off yesterday following the blaze, which took Dublin Fire Brigade a number of hours to bring under control.
All of the downstairs windows were broken and the inside of the premises on the ground floor looked to have been gutted.
Upstairs, one window was broken but the remaining panes had clearly been badly smoke damaged.
While the interior was in effect destroyed, the exterior walls looked structurally sound.
Glasgow Celtic FC bunting and flags hung from the pub’s front exterior wall had not been touched by the flames. A number of GAA flags and a Palestinian flag hanging outside were also intact.
The scene of the fire was examined yesterday by members of the Garda Technical Bureau.
The pub was a modern establishment and was fitted with an extensive closed-circuit television system internally. However, it is not clear if the footage filmed at the time of the raid and fire survived the flames.
