Yesterday evening Lidl on Fortunestown Lane in the Citywest area of the city was broken into and substantially damaged.

Construction machinery was spotted tearing the roof off the building as people were seen raiding the store and leaving with bags of produce.

Cannot believe the thuggish behaviour in #Lidl tonight. These people absolutely deserve to get caught. Horrendous pic.twitter.com/5d2234qrVQ

— Anita O'Brien (@Anita_IsMyName) March 2, 2018

Eventually Digger stolen from the building site comes to rip lidl safe room open ... takes roof off lidl ... #Tallaght #Lidl #lidllooting pic.twitter.com/ry6V9Y34KG

— ?AC (@thatboiyiddo) March 2, 2018

A cash safe was also removed from the store and onlookers filmed the machinery attempting to open the safe on the grounds of the carpark. Shortly after this incident occurred, guards arrived on the scene and nine people were arrested. The men range in age from 24 to 47, and have been charged with various offences including theft, burglary and trespassing for last night's incident. They were expected to appear in court today. In a statement issued to Her yesterday evening, Lidl said: "We are aware of the very serious incident at our Fortunestown Lane store this evening. "Given that the incident is now the subject of a criminal investigation we are not in a position to comment further at this time." A later statement added: "As our store on Fortunestown Lane was closed when the incident occurred this evening, we can confirm no member of our team has been injured."

Please see below statement in relation to the incident at our branch at Fortunestown Lane, Dublin pic.twitter.com/jl8PD57Vcx

— Lidl Ireland (@lidl_ireland) March 2, 2018

And today, Colm Mc Caughley, staff cameraman for RTÉ shared this footage on Twitter of the aftermath of last night's raid. The video shows endless debris around the grounds and a caved in roof as part of the store was demolished.

Shocking footage of Lidl store damaged in last nights raid pic.twitter.com/ACEewhkaEl

— Colm Mc Caughey (@colmwhatyalike) March 3, 2018

Lidl also announced that this morning all stores in Leinster, Munster and Galway will operate under restricted trading hours from 10am to 6pm today, Saturday March 3.