A series of co-ordinated bombings were carried out in Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland, by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) on 17 May 1974. Three car bombs exploded in Dublin during the evening rush hour and a fourth exploded in Monaghan almost ninety minutes later. They killed 34 civilians, 32 in the original attack and 2 in the weeks following the Monaghan bombing. Almost 300 people were injured. Together, the bombings were the deadliest attack of the conflict known as the Troubles (although the deadliest single incident would be the Omagh bombing in 1998), and the deadliest attack in the Republic's history. Most of the victims were young women, although the ages of the dead ranged from 4½ months up to 80 years.
The UVF, a loyalist paramilitary group from Northern Ireland, claimed responsibility for the bombings in 1993. It had launched a number of attacks in the Republic since 1969. The month before the bombings, the British government had lifted the UVF's status as a proscribed organisation. The bombings happened during the Ulster Workers' Council strike; a general strike called by loyalists and unionists in Northern Ireland who opposed the Sunningdale Agreement. Specifically, they opposed the sharing of political power with Irish nationalists, and the proposed role of the Republic in the governance of Northern Ireland. The Republic's government had helped bring about the Agreement. The strike brought down the Agreement and the Northern Ireland Assembly on 28 May.
No one has ever been charged with the bombings. A campaign by the victims' families led to an Irish government inquiry under Mr. Justice Henry Barron. His 2003 report criticised the Garda Síochána's investigation and said the investigators stopped their work prematurely. It also criticised the Fine Gael/Labour government of the time for its inaction and lack of interest in the bombings. The report said it was likely that British military personnel helped the UVF carry out the bombings, including members of the Glenanne gang. The Irish parliament's Joint Committee on Justice called the attacks an act of international terrorism involving British state forces. However, the inquiry was hindered by the British government's refusal to release key documents. The victims' families and others continue to campaign for the British government to release these documents.
Explosions
Dublin
At about 17:30 on Friday 17 May 1974, without warning, three car bombs exploded in Dublin city centre at Parnell Street, Talbot Street and South Leinster Street during rush hour. The streets all ran east-west from busy thoroughfares to railway stations. There was a bus strike in Dublin at the time, which meant there were more people on the streets than usual. According to one of the Irish Army's top bomb disposal officers, Commandant Patrick Trears, the bombs were constructed so well that 100% of each bomb exploded upon detonation.
27 people died in the explosions in Dublin. Many of the dead were young women originally from rural towns employed in the civil service. An entire family (parents and their two children) from central Dublin was killed. Two of the victims were foreign: Antonio Magliocco, an Italian man, and Simone Chetrit, a French Jewish woman whose family had survived the Holocaust.
First bomb
The first of the three Dublin car bombs went off at about 17:28 on Parnell Street, near the intersection with Marlborough Street. It was in a parking bay outside the Welcome Inn pub and Barry's supermarket at 93 and 91 Parnell Street respectively, and near petrol pumps. Shop fronts were blown out, cars were destroyed, and people were thrown in all directions. A brown Mini that had been parked behind the bomb was hurled onto the pavement at a right angle. One survivor described "a big ball of flame coming straight towards us, like a great nuclear mushroom cloud whooshing up everything in its path". The bomb car was a metallic green 1970 Hillman Avenger, registration number DIA 4063. It had been facing toward O'Connell Street, Dublin's main thoroughfare. This car, like the other two bomb cars, had its original registration plates. It had been hijacked in Belfast that morning.
Ten people were killed in this explosion, including two infant girls and their parents, and a World War I veteran. Many others, including a teenage petrol-pump attendant, were severely injured.
Second bomb
The second of the Dublin car bombs went off at about 17:30 on Talbot Street, near the intersection with Lower Gardiner Street. Talbot Street was the main route from the city centre to Connolly station, one of Dublin's primary railway stations. It was parked at 18 Talbot Street, on the north side, opposite Guineys department store. The bomb car was a metallic blue mink Ford Escort, registration number 1385 WZ. It had been stolen that morning in the Docks area of Belfast. The blast damaged buildings and vehicles on both sides of the street. People suffered severe burns and were struck by shrapnel, flying glass and debris; some were hurled through the windows of shops.
Twelve people were killed outright, and another two died over the following days and weeks. Thirteen of the fourteen victims were women, including one who was nine months pregnant. One young woman who had been beside the bomb car was decapitated. Several others lost limbs and a man was impaled through the abdomen by an iron bar. Several bodies lay in the street for half an hour as ambulances struggled to get through traffic jams. At least four bodies were found on the pavement outside Guiney's. The bodies of the victims were covered by newspapers until they were removed from the scene.
Third bomb
The third bomb went off at about 17:32 at the intersection of Nassau Street and South Leinster Street, near the railings of Trinity College and not far from Leinster House, the seat of the Oireachtas. Two women were killed outright. They had been very close to the epicentre of the blast. The bomb car was a blue Austin 1800 with registration number HOI 2487; like the Parnell Street car, it had been hijacked in Belfast that same morning from a taxi company. Dental students from Trinity College rushed to the scene to give first aid to the injured.
Monaghan
Almost ninety minutes later, at about 18:58, a fourth car bomb (weighing 68 kilograms (150 lb)) exploded in the centre of Monaghan town, just south of the border with Northern Ireland. It had been parked outside Protestant-owned Greacen's pub on North Road. The car was a green 1966 Hillman Minx, registration number 6583 OZ; it had been stolen from a Portadown car park several hours before. As in Dublin, no warning had been given. This bomb killed five people outright, and another two died in the following weeks. There is evidence that the car bomb was parked five minutes before the explosion. The bomb site, which was about 270–370 metres (890–1,210 ft) from the Garda station, was preserved by a roster of eight Gardaí from 19:00 on 17 May until 14:30 on 19 May, at which time the technical examination of the area had been completed. Forensic analysis of the metal fragments taken from the site suggested that the bomb had been in a beer barrel or similar container. It has been suggested that the Monaghan bombing was a "supporting attack"; a diversion to draw security away from the border and thus help the Dublin bombers return to Northern Ireland.
Aftermath
After the blasts, bystanders rushed to help the wounded, and emergency response personnel were on the scene within minutes. Hospitals across Dublin were put on standby to receive casualties. However, rescue operations in Dublin were hampered by heavy traffic due to the bus strike. Rescuers, feeling that help was not coming fast enough, lifted the dead and wounded, wrapped them in coats and bundled them into cars to get them to the nearest hospital. Garda Síochána squad cars escorted surgeons through the crowded streets to attend to the wounded. Many people, on finding out what had happened, went straight away to offer blood.
Paddy Doyle of Finglas, who lost his daughter, son-in-law, and two infant granddaughters in the Parnell Street explosion, described the scene inside Dublin's city morgue as having been like a "slaughterhouse", with workers "putting arms and legs together to make up a body".
At 18:00, after all of the dead and injured had been removed, Garda officers cordoned off the three bomb sites in Dublin. Fifteen minutes earlier, at 17:45, the orders were given to call out 'national cordons', to stop the bombers fleeing the state. Garda officers were sent to Connolly Station, Busáras, Dublin Airport, the B&I car ferry port, and the mail boat at Dún Laoghaire. At 18:28, the Dublin-Belfast train was stopped at Dundalk and searched by a team of 18 Gardaí led by an inspector. During the evening of 17 May, Gardaí from the Ballistics, Photography, Mappings, and Fingerprints section visited the three bomb sites in Dublin and examined the debris.
Some accounts give a total of 34 or 35 dead from the four bombings: 34 by including the unborn child of victim Colette Doherty, who was nine months pregnant; and 35 by including the later still-born child of Edward and Martha O'Neill. Edward was killed outright in Parnell Street. Martha O'Neill was not caught up in the attack, although two of their children were seriously injured in the bombing; one of them, a four-year-old boy, suffered severe facial injuries. The 22-month-old daughter of Colette Doherty survived the Talbot Street blast; she was found wandering about near the bomb site, relatively unharmed. Six weeks after the bombings, the elderly mother of Thomas Campbell, who was killed in the Monaghan bombing, allegedly died of the shock she received at the death of her son.
Due to the bombings, the Irish Army withdrew its troops from UN peacekeeping missions for four years.
Reactions
British Prime Minister Harold Wilson described the attacks as "horrific", and said, "Once again it is the defenceless civilian population who suffer the consequences of these mindless and savage terrorist attacks".
Brian Faulkner, the Chief Executive of Northern Ireland and former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, sent to a message to Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave in Dublin, saying:
We in Northern Ireland, who have had to endure so much suffering and death in recent years, can appreciate fully the tragedy of those who have been struck down and the grief of those who have been bereaved in injured in your capital...
Whatever the differences of opinion which may exist in other matters, I believe the responsible people in Northern Ireland and Éire alike want to see this island rid forever of the evil forces which are guilty of such acts.
In Leinster House, about 300 metres from the site of the South Leinster Street blast, political leaders spoke about the bombings at the next session of Dáil Éireann. Statements by government ministers appeared to suggest that the bombings were an inevitable result of the IRA and Loyalist paramilitary campaigns in the UK. Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, of Fine Gael, recorded his disgust and added:
The blood of the innocent victims of last Friday's outrage—and of the victims of similar outrages in the North and in England—is on the hands of every man who has fired a gun or discharged a bomb in furtherance of the present campaign of violence in these islands—just as plainly as it is on the hands of those who parked the cars and set the charges last Friday. In our times, violence cannot be contained in neat compartments and justified in one case but not in another.
The opposition leader Jack Lynch, of Fianna Fáil, was "sickened" by the "cruel" events, and also widened the question of blame:
Every person and every organisation which played any part in the campaign of bombing and violence which killed and maimed people and destroyed property in Belfast, Derry or any other part of our country and indeed in Britain over the past five years, shares the guilt and the shame of the assassins who actually placed these bombs on the streets of Dublin and Monaghan last Friday.
In secret memos, Arthur Galsworthy, British Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland, noted the reactions in Dublin immediately after the bombings. He reported that Minister for Foreign Affairs Garret FitzGerald told him that "the government's view was that popular hostility appeared to be directed more against the IRA", and that
There is no sign of any general anti-Northern Protestant reaction ... The predictable attempt by the IRA to pin the blame on the British (British agents, the SAS, etc) has made no headway at all. ... It is only now that the South has experienced violence that they are reacting in the way that the North has sought for so long. ... it would be ... a psychological mistake for us to rub this point in. ... I think the Irish have taken the point.
In Northern Ireland, Sammy Smyth, then press officer of both the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Workers' Council (UWC) Strike Committee, said, "I am very happy about the bombings in Dublin. There is a war with the Free State and now we are laughing at them." However, neither the UDA nor UVF admitted responsibility. A 'Captain Craig' telephoned the Irish News and Irish Times, claiming responsibility for the bombings on behalf of the 'Red Hand Brigade', which is believed to be a cover name. Richard Eder at The New York Times reported on 19 May 1974 at the scene two days after the bombing:
The tendency here not to think about the problems of the North and the consequent lack of any strong public pressure to take action against the gunmen operating from the republic's territory comes from something more complex than complacency.
Partly it was the residual sympathy for the tradition of violent action to obtain a united Ireland. Partly it was the pessimistic conclusion that only a final armed showdown between northern Protestants and Roman Catholics would solve the problem, and the natural tendency to think as little as possible about such a terrifying and dangerous prospect.