By Sean O’Driscoll

AN Irish police sergeant’s son who was allegedly involved in setting up robberies in Ireland has been arrested in New York following a nine-year investigation. Irish police claim that 39-year-old Joseph Byrne was one of three men who tied up the 18-year-old daughter of a Dundalk pub owner before taking 8,200 Irish pounds from the pub.

U.S. marshals raided his home in New York last weekend after they received an extradition request from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.

Joe Byrne is the son of retired Sergeant Thomas Byrne, who was described as “one of the nicest men in the world” by a source familiar with his son’s case.

According to New York court documents, Joe Byrne, a married father living on Ridge Street in the Irish neighborhood of Pearl River in Westchester County, is suspected of being one of three men who robbed the Ready Penny Inn on the Ardee Road in Dundalk in March 1997.

He is also wanted for a burglary in Louth in November 1996, in which 9,000 pounds in life savings belonging to an elderly customer of the Ready Penny Inn were stolen.

Byrne was held without bail in a federal prison after a hearing on Saturday before Judge George Yanis in White Plains in Westchester. Irish police believe that Byrne, a former barman at the Ready Penny Inn, acted as a spotter for two other men.

He is alleged to have gathered information about the pub’s cash flow before the robbery, in which the raiders tied up the teenage daughter of the former bar owner, Larry Sweeney.

Larry Nevins, the chief U.S. Marshals deputy for Westchester, said Joseph Byrne will reappear in court in the next 30 days after he has chosen a defense attorney.