Once again a major court case in Northern Ireland has collapsed in spectacular fashion.

Chris Ward, the Northern Bank employee accused of being the inside man in the theft of £26.5m from the bank at Christmas four years ago, was cleared of all charges after the Crown case imploded. It was made evident from the beginning that the case against Mr Ward was circumstantial.

A crucial part of the case against him was that he manipulated the staff rota on the day of the robbery to create the circumstances which made it possible. However, the court was told that the change in rota was a chance decision by management. An already flimsy case was terminally damaged and the Crown had no option but to decline to offer any further evidence.

For Mr Ward the dropping of the court case is the end of a three-year ordeal. He was originally detained for questioning for longer than any other suspect in Northern Ireland’s legal history as detectives tried to break his pleas of innocence. He was even bugged while on holiday abroad. Today he can say that his claims of innocence have been vindicated.

However the memory of the robbery will last long for both his family and his colleague Kevin McMullan and his wife Kyran. The Ward family were held hostage and Mrs McMullan was taken away from her family home to ensure that the two bank employees played their roles in getting the money out of the bank’s strongroom. Mrs McMullan’s testimony to the court was among the most dramatic ever heard in the province. Fearing that she was about to be killed she had pleaded with her kidnappers to ensure that her body was returned to her family. The robbery was carried out by a ruthless gang and it was a tremendous ordeal for those caught up in it.

The Provisional IRA was blamed for the robbery which almost brought the peace process crashing down. Only a small fraction of the stolen money — the largest bank robbery in UK history — has ever been recovered. Although two other men were charged in relation to the robbery, charges against them were dropped before they ever reached trial stage.

The failure of the case against Mr Ward, following on from the failure to convict anyone for the Omagh bombing or to gain convictions against those accused in relation to the murder of Robert McCartney is another huge embarrassment for the police and for the Public Prosecution Service.

Many people will now question both the quality of the investigations into these three high profile cases and the judgment of the PPS in bringing people to court, even if trial judges had vindicated the decision to prosecute. It has to be accepted that cases with paramilitary overtones are notoriously difficult to crack — often witnesses are reluctant to come forward and perpetrators are adept at leaving few, if any, forensic clues. However the failure to obtain any convictions undermines confidence in the whole justice system.

Now we await clarification from the PSNI on where its investigation into the robbery now stands. According to the evidence given to the court, the robbery was carried out by a large number of people who were prepared to inflict violence on their captors. Those people are still out there but it looks increasingly unlikely that they will ever stand in the dock.