Letter tells of Haughey role in `breaking' IRA

Mr Peter Berry, the secretary of the Department of Justice, wrote privately from his hospital bed to the Taoiseach, Mr Jack Lynch, on June 8th, 1970, to give him chapter and verse on why he believed Mr Kevin Boland's behaviour in recent times was "inexplicable in the light of his personal history". The letter was written to Mr Lynch shortly after the Arms Crisis of early May 1970, when Mr Charles Haughey was sacked from the Fianna Fail government and Mr Boland resigned.

Since the focus of the criticism of Mr Lynch was that he was denying the right of Northern nationalists to defend themselves, Mr Berry was keen to remind him of the roles played by Mr Boland and Mr Haughey in helping to end the IRA campaign of 1956-62.

Mr Berry reminded Mr Lynch that among the 206 republicans interned in 1957 in the Curragh were "an appreciable number from Northern Ireland, members of the IRA who had fled across the Border and had submitted, some of them with guns in their hands, to arrest by unarmed gardai in Counties Louth, Cavan, Monaghan and Leitrim.

"Kevin Boland had uttered no protest against acting as their gaoler." Moreover, Mr Boland had taken "a very active part - as did his father before him - in smashing the IRA".

Mr Berry depicted Mr Haughey as determined to break the IRA. He emphasised that it was on Mr Haughey's initiative that the government had reactivated the Special Criminal Court.

"This was a course which the Department of Justice had advocated and urged on his predecessor for a considerable time. It was a tough measure."

Among those brought before the court were 18 people with addresses in Northern Ireland. Mr Berry credited Mr Haughey with introducing the policy which "broke the back of the organisation".

Mr Berry concluded: "It will be recalled that Mr Haughey's actions on Saturday, April 18th, 1970, (and in previous days, going back into March) in facilitating free customs clearance of arms at Dublin seaport and Dublin Airport and in his attempts on April 18th to suborn the secretary of the Department of Justice [this was Mr Berry himself] and Chief Supt Fleming of the Special Branch from taking police action against an illegal importation was not his first association with the IRA in his new role.

"In September 1969 it had come to light [in the Special Branch] that he had a meeting with Ryan, the O/C of the Dublin Brigade (shortly afterwards quartermaster-general of the IRA) in which a deal was made that the IRA would be facilitated in the movement of arms to Northern Ireland, and in return they would call off the burning and destruction of the property of foreign wealthy residents."