SENIOR MANAGEMENT at the country's main banks "need to do more" to ensure ransoms are not paid to gangs involved in so-called "tiger" kidnappings and need to be aware ransoms are being invested in guns and drugs, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern has said.

Speaking ahead of security talks with the chief executives of the main banks this morning, Mr Ahern said bank robberies involving kidnapping were escalating to a "new level" in that bank workers with young children were now being targeted.

It was unacceptable that a bank worker whose relatives were being held hostage could walk into a bank and leave within a short period with a very significant ransom sum.

Procedures needed to be reviewed, he said, adding that the key to foiling tiger robberies was notifying gardai early rather than waiting until ransom money had left a bank branch.

"The Government is extremely worried that money is getting into the hands of criminals who then buy drugs and guns. We have to make better efforts to ensure that type of money doesn't get into the hands of these criminals on a regular basis as is happening," said the Minister.

Mr Ahern and the Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy will today meet the banks' chief executives.

The talks were arranged before the kidnapping of Bank of Ireland official Adrian Ronan and his family in Kilkenny on Tuesday by a gang trying to rob [euro]3 million.

The gang broke into the Ronans' home at Ballycallan at 6.15am. They took Mary Ronan away and told her husband, a former Kilkenny hurler, that she would only be freed unharmed if he got [euro]3 million from the Kilkenny city branch where he worked.

When Mr Ronan went to the branch he could only get about [euro]200,000. When he relayed this to the gang via mobile phone they became incensed but abandoned the robbery a short time later.

Mrs Ronan was held at an unmanned weather station near St Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny city. She was tied up and gagged but when left by her captor at 2pm managed to free herself.

She had earlier struggled with him and he fired a warning shot over her head from his handgun.

Mr Ronan was left in his house with his three children, all aged under 10 years, when their mother was taken away. He was told to get the money when his working day started. He took the children into the bank branch with him.

Mrs Ronan and the three children were earlier locked into a bathroom at the family home as the gang gave instructions to Mr ronan shortly before 7am.

Both Mr and Mrs Ronan were threatened they would be shot dead. The raiders also pointed the gun at their knees threatening to kneecap them.

The general secretary of the Irish Bank Officials' Association, Larry Broderick, said banks' procedures needed to be tightened to protect his members from attack.

The former Kilkenny hurler DJ Carey, who knows Mr Ronan and was himself robbed in recent years, said the criminal justice system needed to deal with armed gangs in a much firmer manner.

Originally published by CONOR LALLY Crime Correspondent.

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