Family held hostage during robbery

GARDAÍ have launched an intensive hunt for the armed gang who kidnapped the family of a security firm worker and robbed a van making a delivery of cash to a Dublin city centre bank.

This latest robbery, in which a family were terrorised by armed criminals, took place at about 6.30am when a number of armed men forced their way into a family home off Bath Avenue in Irishtown where the employee of a security company, his mother and niece, were held hostage.

Sometime later, the man’s mother and his niece were taken from the house and held, under threat, at some secret location for six hours while the robbery got under way. The man was instructed to go the Bank of Ireland in O’Connell Street at around 11.30am where a cash-in-transit van operated by Brinks Allied, his employer, was making a delivery. He was ordered to drive to Drumcondra where he had to leave the money, believed to be around €100,000, in a white Renault van which he left in a hotel car park.