Security guards 'need protection'

Security worker handed over cash for hostage release

More must be done to protect security workers transporting money, a union has urged following three cash robberies.

In south Belfast, a woman was taken hostage while her partner who works for a security firm was forced to hand over more than £1m in cash for her release.

In Newtownabbey, a security guard was pushed to the ground outside a bookies. In east Belfast, an armed man grabbed a cash box from a guard outside a bank.

The GMB union's Michael Mulholland said attacks were becoming more frequent.

"It's not the first situation where families of security company employees have been put at risk," he said.

"This can't go on - we really do need to deliver a safer working environment and a better structure for the delivery of cash in Northern Ireland from now on."

The Chairman of the Policing Board, Sir Desmond Rea, said it had been concerned about a number of robberies in Northern Ireland over the past 18 months.

He said the board had organised a meeting between representatives of the banks and the cash transporters, as well as the police.

"All parties have got to give much more reflection and action to the prevention of attacks and in the categories that we discussed were systems, the staff, management and we touched on the prosecution of offenders," he said.

"I believe that that meeting was valuable, it demonstrates the board doing what this board should be doing."

The £1.2m security van robbery in south Belfast on Tuesday was the second theft involving Brinks in two weeks.

The woman was held at a large disused house

A woman was taken from her home at Belvoir in the middle of the night and held hostage at a disused property in Annadale Avenue.

At the same time, her partner, an employee with the security firm, was told to drive a cash delivery van to the forecourt of a filling station in the upper Lisburn Road area of Finaghy

He was given instructions on how to hand over the large sum of cash.

Last month, more than 2.5m euros were seized in north Dublin as Brinks employees reportedly stopped at a service station for coffee.

Traumatised

In Newtownabbey on Tuesday, a security guard and a colleague were left extremely traumatised after a robber fired a shot during a raid.

A cash delivery employee was confronted by two masked men, one armed with a handgun, outside a bookmakers' shop on the Doagh Road.

They pushed the man to the ground and stole a cashbox containing between £10,000 and £20,000. One of them fired a shot into the air.

In a separate raid, about £10,000 was stolen during an armed robbery in east Belfast.

A man armed with a handgun got out of a car outside the Northern Bank on the Upper Newtownards Road at about 1230 BST.

The robber approached a security guard, grabbed a cash box and assaulted him.

Meanwhile, a threatened strike by money delivery staff in the Republic of Ireland has been called off.

The stoppage had been planned for Friday in response to a spate of armed robberies.

In the most recent, about 2.5m euro was stolen from a Brinks Allied consignment in Dublin three weeks ago.

Employers and union representatives have now agreed a strategy to tackle health and safety concerns.