This article is more than 11 years old

This article is more than 11 years old

Irish gangsters have staged the biggest cash robbery in the history of the Republic, stealing up to €7 million from the Bank of Ireland in Dublin's College Green early today.

The Garda Siochana said an armed gang took the family of a Bank of Ireland worker hostage at their County Kildare home on Thursday night.

The gang forced their way into the home at Kilteel and seized the worker's partner, her mother and a seven-year-old child. The man's partner was beaten before the family were taken away in their car.

The worker, who is in his 20s, was forced to drive his car to the Bank of Ireland in College Green, across from Trinity College, and get the cash.

He handed it over to the gang at the Clontarf Dart suburban rail station in north Dublin. His family was then released in the Ashbourne area north of Dublin city.

No shots were fired but the family is said to be extremely traumatised.

Security sources in the Republic today told the Guardian that the chief suspect in the robbery was a career criminal in his early 60s based in north County Dublin. He is out on bail on other charges.

The last major cash robbery on a similar scale took place at a security firm depot near Dublin airport more than a decade ago. An organised Irish crime gang stole €4m in cash.

The largest cash robbery on the entire island remains the Northern Bank raid when the IRA stole up to £26m after holding the families of two bank officials hostage. The officials were forced to hand over sacks filled with millions in cash. Today's raid is a carbon copy of it, although there is nothing to suggest any paramilitary involvement in the Bank of Ireland robbery.

Ireland's minister for justice, Dermot Ahern, is to meet with the state's top police officer, the garda commissioner, over the robbery. Ahern says he wants to know if security procedures at banks need to be changed or improved.

The Bank of Ireland building was the first Irish parliament in the 18th century.