Thanks for the quick offer of help but I think I have just solved it!
By searching for other sites that use transmenu with placeholders I came up with this soution
In the file /www/templates/ja_quillaja/ja_transmenu/ja-transmenu.php
at line 235
case 3:
// don't link it
$txt = '<a href="#" class="'. $menuclass .'" '. $id .$title.'><span>'. $txt .'</span></a>';
break;
I changed the line to
$txt = '<a class="'. $menuclass .'" '. $id .$title.'><span>'. $txt .'</span></a>';
Droping the HREF and that works for me.
I am guessing that that the A Href=”#” use to work on older browsers – but in IE7 and FF2.0 it returns you to root.
Hopefully that will help someone else searching for this. Have marked as solved
thanks
J