A DELEGATION of senior Garda officers is due to meet officials from all of the country’s main banks today to discuss the fallout from last Friday’s €7.6 million raid on the Bank of Ireland.
Senior officers specialising in crime and security, led by Assistant Commissioner Mick McCarthy, plan to meet the heads of security and other officials from all the main banks at Garda Headquarters in Phoenix Park, Dublin, this morning.
They will discuss the protocols in place for dealing with so-called tiger kidnappings like that at the Bank of Ireland vaults facility at Dublin’s College Green.
The raid was the biggest in the history of the State.
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern spoke with Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy over the weekend and was briefed on the latest developments in the Garda’s investigation into the raid, which involved hostage-taking.
Mr Ahern and Mr Murphy also discussed the issue of security in the banks and issues identified will be raised with the banks at Garda headquarters today. In the hours after the raid, Mr Ahern expressed his concern that the Bank of Ireland did not inform gardaí the raid was under way until after bank worker Shane Travers (24) left College Green with the cash for the raiders.
Mr Ahern said the bank should have informed gardaí before Mr Travers left College Green at 7.15am on Friday, giving gardaí an opportunity to put a reaction operation in place. Instead the bank rang gardaí at least 10 minutes later, by which time Mr Travers would have been almost at Clontarf Dart station, less than two miles away, where he handed over his car with the four bags of money to a gang member.
Garda sources said this morning’s talks were not about giving the banking sector a “dressing down”.
“The aim now is to work with the banks to help them put best procedures in place to ultimately protect their workers,” said one source.
It has now emerged that the gang gave Mr Travers a Polaroid photograph to show to his colleagues of his girlfriend, Stephanie Smith, after she had been tied up with her mother, Joan, and her five-year-old nephew. The photograph was to convince Mr Travers’s colleagues of the importance of letting him take the money.
The gang also gave Mr Travers photographs of his co-workers and some of their homes. Gardaí believe this was to show the others in the bank that the gang had had them under surveillance and to intimidate them so they would not frustrate Mr Travers in taking the ransom money.
The Smiths were taken hostage at gunpoint at their family home in Kilteel, Co Kildare, on Thursday night. Mr Travers was told to go to work the next morning for his usual 7am start and fill four bags with cash. He was told the two women and the boy would only be released when the cash was handed over.
Gardaí were last night still questioning seven people arrested on Friday night.