and his conviction was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal in May 2012. The court decided that the warrant used to search his house was invalid because it had been issued by the senior Garda officer in charge of the investigation under section 29(1) of the Offences against the State Act, which the Supreme Court had recently found to be repugnant to the Constitution of Ireland. The court ordered a retrial on nine of the ten original counts of money laundering. It directed that the tenth, relating to a sum of money allegedly found in Cunningham's home, was not to be retried. Cunningham was remanded in custody with the possibility of bail. At the retrial in February 2014, Ted Cunningham pleaded guilty and received a 5-year suspended sentence on two counts of laundering about £275,000. He avoided imprisonment on account of his bad health and his promise to resign from Chesterton Finance. The sums of £2.985 million and €45,000 which had been impounded during police raids were forfeited to the state. Cunningham sued Northern Bank in 2020 regarding the impounded money, alleging that the Gardai had seized it improperly. Legacy Northern Bank announced soon after the robbery that it would replace its £10, £20, £50 and £100 notes; the new banknotes would have different colours, new logos and altered serial numbers. By March 2005 it had done so, meaning that the uncirculated banknotes which had been stolen would be hard to spend. This still left the £4.5 million in notes from other banks and £5.5 million in old, used Northern Bank notes, which were untraceable. After the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 had provided a tentative ending to The Troubles, the political situation in Belfast remained tense. By the end of 2004, the different parties in the Northern Ireland peace process were reaching agreement, but at a meeting on 8 December at which Bertie Ahern, Tony Blair, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were present, the Sinn Féin representatives refused to promise that the Provisional IRA would stop its criminal activity. Less than two weeks later, the Northern Bank robbery again inflamed tensions since despite the denials of Sinn Féin, the IRA was blamed by Ahern and Blair for the heist. In 2005, the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Paul Murphy remarked "I cannot hide my own judgment that the impact is deeply damaging". Mark Durkan, leader of