Yet the need to tighten security in banks and on cash-in-transit (CIT) vans couldn't be greater. The fact that we have the worst record in Europe for armed attacks on CIT vans speaks for itself.

We suffer one attack for every three armoured cash trucks on the road - a figure four times higher than the EU average.

The response to last week's Carlow raid has been predictable. The minister for justice and the gardaí are irritated with the lack of security within the security industry itself. Staff vetting is clearly inadequate.

Better safes, a satellite-location system for vans and stricter protocols for opening safes, including remote access only, have all been proposed before but are still not yet the norm within banks and the cash-in-transit industry.

The security firms themselves are angry with the minister for breaking promises such as allowing armoured vans access to bus lanes, as well as permitting parking for them on double yellow lines and for failing to introduce a security code of conduct.

But most tellingly, there is no incentive to use electronic banking - the charges levied by both the banks and the government on debit card transactions actively encourage us to use cash.

Lost within all this are the victims. These are the families who have been held hostage and left traumatised by their experience.

But the victims are also the members of the wider workforce which is in charge of either its own or other people's money, as restaurant or shop managers or bank keyholders are now very afraid that they may be the next target.

The gangs want cash and, as the experience in Belgium has shown, when that cash is removed, the number of 'tiger raids' falls dramatically. Card fraud increases - but at least innocent people are not kidnapped and held in derelict houses with guns to their heads.