AN POST has defended its security arrangements following a hostage-taking and robbery in which more than €550,000 was stolen, saying the number of thefts at post offices has been decreasing.
A 2½-month-old girl and her mother were taken hostage in the latest raid in Drogheda, Co Louth.
Figures supplied by An Post to The Irish Times show there were 51 post office robberies and attempted robberies in 2007 with 59 the following year, 2008.
That figure almost doubled to 100 in 2009, when many organised crime gangs turned to robberies to raise money as demand for illegal drugs plummeted because of reducing disposable income in the recession.
However, last year the number of post office robberies and attempted robberies had fallen to 73. No figures are available yet for the current year.
A spokesman for the organisation said many attempted robberies yielded nothing for the gangs involved because of the security procedures that had been put in place in recent years.
These included physical security measures such as reinforced glass shields between customers and staff working behind counters, and the installation of panic buttons and time-lock safes.
The spokesman said staff had also been given training in security protocols and crime prevention measures.
“There are almost 1,200 post offices around the country so in the scheme of things [the number of robberies] is quite small,” he said.
While some people believed post offices were now a softer robbery target than banks, since the main financial institutions had installed security measures such as double-entry doors operated on buzzer access, this was not the case, he said.
He added there had been six incidents this year involving its staff and their families being taken hostage but only two had resulted in the theft of money.
General secretary of the Irish Post Masters’ Union Chris McGann said his organisation had always urged its near-1,200 members to follow the security protocols.
“The threat of this type of attack is unfortunately what our members are living with on a daily basis,” he said of the raid in Drogheda on Tuesday.
On that occasion more than €550,000 was stolen from the West Street post office in the Co Louth town after an employee from the branch was taken hostage in his Drogheda home overnight along with his partner and baby daughter.
The mother and child were taken to another location by the armed gang while the An Post worker was told to go to work on Tuesday morning and take a large sum from a delivery of children’s allowance cash to the post office at about 10am.
The man took the money to a designated drop-off point and left it there for collection by the gang. His partner and child were released several hours later, at about 1.30pm at Damastown, in north Co Dublin.
A team of 40 Garda detectives are working on the case, including members of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Organised Crime Unit.
Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has asked the Garda for a report on whether An Post followed security protocols on Tuesday for incidents involving hostage-taking.
The key protocol is that money to free a hostage should not be taken from premises such as banks and post offices unless gardaí have been informed.
When this protocol was followed in the past, it allowed gardaí to put in place rapid reaction operations that in some cases have foiled such robberies and led to arrests.