A witness at the inquests on the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings has said he saw a man filming shopfronts where the car bomb exploded in Talbot Street, Dublin, two days before the 1974 atrocity. Olivia Kelly reports.
Mr Simon Behan said the day after the blasts that killed 34 people in Dublin and Monaghan, he gave the gardaí a description of the man he saw, but was never asked to view photos of suspects.
On May 15th, 1974, Mr Behan had parked his car on Lr Gardiner Street at around 3.15 p.m. when he noticed a man pointing a camera directly at Guiney's on Talbot Street. The man was standing beside a Northern Ireland-registered red Fiat car and at one point stopped filming to get something from the car.
Mr Behan said he stopped to look at the man because he was surprised to see someone filming in the area. "It wouldn't exactly be the greatest tourist attraction on earth," he told the inquest yesterday.
He was also conscious that the car had a Northern registration, because of the "Troubles", he said, and noted down the licence plate number, GIY 118.
After the bombings he told his brother, who was a garda, about what he had seen and subsequently made a statement to gardaí.
The man he saw was about five feet, six or seven inches tall. He had very dark hair, a high forehead and a receding hairline. He seemed to be aged between 35 and 38. He weighed about 10 stone. He had a thin face and sallow skin and was wearing gold rimless glasses. He wore a white shirt, grey cardigan and dark trousers.
Mr Behan said he was not contacted by gardaí again after he made his statement and was never asked to view any "mugshots".
The officer in charge of the scene at Talbot Street after the bombings has told the inquest that the area was hosed down by the fire brigade before forensic experts arrived at the scene.
Chief Supt William Herlihy, then Insp Herlihy, said the streets and buildings were washed down with hoses, even though there were no fires after the explosion.
"I remember the scene being hosed down, as a precaution. There were no fires, but there may have been the threat of some."
The hosing down took place prior to any experts arriving at the seen, he said.
Chief Supt Herlihy said he was the senior officer at the Talbot Street scene and was one the first officers to arrive on site after the bombing.
He said he saw two people lying in the window of Guiney's. They were obviously deceased, he said, and he covered them with a piece of carpet dragged in from the road.
Other bodies were lying in the street and he covered them with bits of broken blinds that had been blown out from the windows of shops.
He said he stayed at the scene for the remainder of the evening. The fire brigade arrived and gardaí used their ladders for accessing the tops of buildings, before the area was washed down.
"With their assistance we searched the roofs of the buildings for limbs and body parts," he said.