Perpetrators of Dublin bombings still evade justice

Malachy, my younger brother, was a medical student at Trinity in May 1974. We had met in Trinity earlier in that magnificent summer's afternoon of Friday, May 17th, and afterwards I had gone down to the offices of Independent Newspapers in Middle Abbey Street, where I then worked. I was coming down the stairs when I heard the first dull thunder-like sound at about 5.30 p.m. and at the door of Independent House when I heard the second. Having worked in Northern Ireland from 1970, I was sure these were bomb explosions.

Unexpectedly, Malachy had followed me down to Middle Abbey Street and we both ran out to O'Connell Street to see from where the bomb blasts had come. We saw people running down from North Earl Street and went up there and then on to Talbot Street.

We walked through the initial debris and I was making a mental note of the windows that were shattered, the initial signs of damage to shop fronts and the cars which were burnt out. At first there seemed nothing very different from countless such scenes I had witnessed in Belfast over the previous several years. Then we saw a body and then another and then another.

There was stillness about Talbot Street. Almost a complete stillness. Just occasional groans coming from the debris.

Almost at our feet there was a man lying on the pavement, with a large piece of a car fender jabbed into his side. He was a big man, probably in his mid to late 30s, dark curly hair, wearing a dark suit and white open-necked shirt. We tried to lift him but he was too heavy. A stranger came to help us and we carried him awkwardly up towards Moran's Hotel and into the foyer. He was just about conscious and bleeding profusely. The staff at Moran's would not allow us leave him in the foyer or carry him into the dining room. They insisted we take him downstairs. We did as we were told and we let the man fall on the stairs on the way down.

We went back outside and by then people were screaming. Along with several others, we started to go back down Talbot Street where we had seen other injured people but a garda was shouting that there was another bomb about to go off and we all ran back towards Amiens Street station. Within a minute or two we realised we were no safer there than in Talbot Street and along with several other helpers we returned.

A woman was lying on the footpath outside a shoe shop. She was just about breathing. We lifted her up and she disintegrated in our arms. Her body simply fell apart inside her clothes. We laid her back down.

There were several other people groaning on the roadway. Malachy saw a young woman and thought she could be saved if got to hospital quickly. No ambulances had come: it was now certainly 20 minutes after the bomb had exploded. I saw a man getting into a car further down Talbot Street, towards O'Connell Street. I ran to him and explained that a woman could be saved if she could be brought to hospital immediately and asked if he would take her. He hesitated and said he would. I returned to where Malachy was with the woman and we started to carry her towards O'Connell Street. It took us about three or four minutes and when we got there the man and his car were gone.

A Garda inspector had taken charge and was directing those involved in the attempted rescue to line up the bodies at the junction of Talbot Street and Gardiner Street. It was as though he could not cope with the terrible agony of those still alive.

It seemed to take a lifetime for an ambulance to arrive: certainly none arrived for at least 45 minutes. Then the first one that came had no stretchers, only the frame for stretchers, which meant that just a single person could be placed in the ambulance and then only on the floor between the two frames.

We stayed on the scene for another hour or so and then went back to the offices of Independent Newspapers where I wrote what we had seen for the following day's Irish Independent. The only thing I remember about the newsroom that evening was another stillness.

We then went across O'Connell Street to Daly's pub on the quays, and there was more stillness there. I had been unaffected by it all up to then, partly distanced, trying to remember what was happening for the piece I was going to write. We had a few brandies - one of the few occasions in my life I drank brandy. We both stood there silently at the bar staring straight ahead, crying.

On the way home we saw queues of people lining up outside the Blood Bank at the top of Lower Leeson Street, near the canal.

Liam Cosgrave, who was then Taoiseach, went on television that night. He spoke quietly and with dignity, expressing sorrow over what happened - it was beyond outrage. I remember feeling proud of him.

He might well, of course, have done the usual bit about leaving no stone unturned until the perpetrators of that awful deed were brought to justice. I hope he didn't and I don't remember him doing so.

And what a terrible irony if he had.

It seems that those who planted those bombs in Dublin and Monaghan on May 17th, 1974, became known to the security forces in Northern Ireland not long afterwards and to the security forces in the South not long after that. Yet very little seems to have been done to bring them to justice, perhaps because they did not act alone or without at least the connivance of members of the British security forces.

Those who died in Dublin that day were John O'Brien (aged 23), Anne O'Brien (22), Jacqueline O'Brien (17 months), Anne Marie O'Brien (5 months), Anne Massey (21), Anne Byrne (35), Simone Chertrit (30), John Dargle, Patrick Fay (47), Antonio Magliocco (36), Anne Marren (20), Colette Doherty (21), Christina O'Loughlin (51), Edward O'Neill (39), Marie Phelan (20), Maureen Shiels (44), Breda Turner (21), Marie Butler, Breda Grace (35), Mary McKenna, Siobhan Rice (19), Dorothy Morris, John Walshe (27), Elizabeth Fitzgerald (59), Josephine Bradley (21) and Concepta Dempsey (65). The last three died in the days afterwards.

Those who died in the Monaghan bombs were John Travers (29), Margaret White (46), Thomas Campbell (52), Patrick Askin (53), George Williamson (73), Archibald Harper (72) and Thomas Croarkin (35). The last two died in the days afterwards.