A twenty-year jail sentence was imposed today on a convicted IRA member for the kidnapping of Gary and Katie O’Donovan at their home in Rochestown, Cork.

A family kidnap trial took a sensational turn today when the man who had denied all charges against him had a change of heart and pleaded guilty to all counts.

Gary O’Donovan yesterday described a moment during his family’s kidnap ordeal which he could not believe as he sat hooded and tied up and heard the sound of his captor snoring loudly.

One of the masked raiders involved in the false imprisonment of a married couple at their home in Rochestown, Cork, last May fell asleep during the crime which gave the householder the chance to untie himself and get out of the house to alert the gardaí, it emerged today.