The Provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland was very active in the country during the Troubles (1969–1998). The country was seen as a safe haven for IRA members who used it to flee from British security forces, organise training and homemade weapons, and conduct attacks on British or Loyalist targets in nearby Northern Ireland, England, and even continental Europe. Irish authorities viewed armed activity by Irish republican militants in their country as a major security risk and took steps to mitigate it. They censored representatives of such militants from appearing on television or radio by Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, introduced the non-jury Special Criminal Court to easily prosecute the militants, and made it illegal to be members of certain Republican militant organisations.
Despite this, sympathetic Irish citizens and their territory itself provided the most external support to the IRA more than any nation, group or organisation. Nearly all of the PIRA finances that were used in its armed campaign came from criminal or legitimate activities in the Republic and Northern Ireland. Hundreds of training camps, safe houses, supply routes, and bomb factories were established in the Republic. Many of the PIRA founders were from the Republic, and thousands of Republic residents joined the IRA as volunteers during the 1969-98 period. In spite of the harsh measures taken by the Irish government, there is little to no evidence these had any detrimental effect on IRA activities in the Republic.
The Republic also had to deal with mostly small but hundreds of attacks by loyalist and republican paramilitaries in its territory, including bombings, prison escapes, kidnappings, and gun battles. The largest loss of life both in its territory and the entire conflict came on 17 May 1974, when the Glenanne gang–an informal alliance of loyalist militants and British security forces–exploded no warning bombs in the cities of Dublin and Monaghan; 33 civilians were killed and 300 others injured.
Activity in the Republic of Ireland Training camps Since the beginning of the war in 1969, a number of training camps in the Republic of Ireland were established by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The IRA Southern Command, headquartered in Dublin, was responsible for maintaining these camps in the Republic and recruiting volunteers to be trained on weapons procured either within the country or overseas.
Finances
To finance their armed campaigns during the Troubles (1969–1998), the IRA engaged in numerous illegal and semi-legitimate funding activities within the Republic of Ireland, such as fundraising, bank robbery, extortion, drug trafficking, bootleg recording, racketeering and legitimate businesses such as social clubs, taxi companies, and retail shops. Most or nearly all of the revenue for the IRA came from legitimate and criminal activities within Ireland, all which contributed to the longevity of the conflict as it enabled the group to buy enough guns and explosives. Overseas donations, including $12 million in cash from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and $3.6 million raised by NORAID in America for the Republican cause (but not necessarily directly to the IRA coffers), were often exaggerated.
The Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee in its 26 June 2002 report stated that "the importance of overseas donations has been exaggerated and donations from the USA have formed only a small portion of IRA income." It identified extortion, fuel laundering, rum-running, tobacco smuggling, armed robbery, and counterfeiting in Ireland and Britain as the primary sources of funding for both Republican and Loyalist militants throughout and after the Troubles, while "the sums involved [from overseas] [were and] are comparatively small". The committee estimated that the Provisional IRA made £5-8 million a year against annual spending of £1.5m to carry out its campaign.
Attacks within
To avoid alienating support within the Republic of Ireland, the IRA Southern Command issued General Order No.8, in which its first provision stated:
Volunteers are strictly forbidden to take any military action against 26 County forces under any circumstances whatsoever. The importance of this order in present circumstances especially in the border areas cannot be over-emphasised.
In spite of this order, IRA volunteers and members of the Irish security forces (namely the Irish Army and the Republic of Ireland's police force, Garda Síochána) often clashed in the country which led to deaths and injuries. For example, a trainee Garda and an Irish Army soldier were killed in a shootout during the rescue of Don Tidey in 1983, while Detective Garda Jerry McCabe was killed by machine-gun fire as he sat in his patrol car in Adare County Limerick during the escort of a post office delivery in 1996. In total, the Provisional IRA killed six Gardaí and one Irish Army]soldier, mostly during robberies.
Arms importation into Northern Ireland and England
1969–1979 After 1969, and the split with the Official IRA, the Provisional IRA gained control of a majority of the stockpiled weaponry still held from previous IRA campaigns. It found that the stockpiles consisted mostly of pre-World War II small firearms from British and Irish armouries ranging from Lee–Enfield, plus Bren light machine guns (LMG), a Thompson submachine gun (SMG), and Webley revolvers from British and Irish armouries.Previous raids included the 1940 Christmas Raid, the 1953 Felstead Raid, and the 1955 Hazebrouck Raid. In February 1970, the IRA raided a Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil (FCA) barracks in Midleton, County Cork, acquiring a Vickers machine gun, two Bren guns, and six converted .303 rifles. Small arms were also reported missing from Irish Defence Forces barracks, with one man receiving a six-month prison sentence for the theft of an FN rifle. A substantial amount of rifle ammunition was also taken by IRA members at Foxrock, an affluent suburb of Dublin. A young man from Derry received a six-year sentence for breaking into a gunshop in Tullamore and stealing six firearms including rifles and 12-bore shotguns as well as 12,000 rounds of ammunition. In May 1970, Irish politicians Charles Haughey, Neil Blaney, and John Kelly, Irish Army Captain James Kelly, and Belgian businessman Albert Luykx were acquitted during the Arms Crisis of smuggling weapons to the IRA during the beginning of the conflict.
The primary and prominent source of arms in the Republic for the IRA was explosives. Mines, quarries, farms, and construction sites were where the explosive, gelignite, as well as detonators and safe fuses located. IRA supporters and members who were familiar with these localities began to obtain these types of equipment. In April 1970, for example, three men were arrested in Saggart with six sticks of gelignite, six detonators and four feet of fuse wire. In September 1971, 70 lbs of gelignite, 100 detonators and 200 safety fuses were stolen by the IRA from a line works near Kilmacow, with the help of local supporters who had knowledge of the area. Four months later, the ESB construction site at Turlough Hill was raided with 1,400 lbs of gelignite stolen, considerably more than 200 lbs stolen the previous year. Irish queries found out that ten substantial gelignite raids took place between 1 January 1971 and 12 January 1972. Stratton Mills, MP for Belfast North, said that "there is virtually a gelignite trail across the [Irish] border", comparing it with the famous Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War. Mills stated that:
[S]ome 60 per cent of the gelignite used in Northern Ireland has come from Southern Ireland [sic], and the security authorities believe that the figure might well be higher than that because of the difficulty of definite identification in all cases. In Northern Ireland steps are taken to control the use and distribution of gelignite. Certain steps have been taken recently in the Republic, but there is a great need for much tighter measures.
After the Irish government began cracking down on commercial explosives, IRA engineers began moving "to develop alternative supplies of explosives" in the Republic of what the media termed "bomb factories", the source for the vast majority of the explosions in the north and against England for the remainder of the conflict. By spring 1972, they successfully manufactured quantities of two types of homemade explosives (HMEs), using mostly commercially available fertilisers and ANFO (a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil). The British Army estimated by the summer of that year, 90% of the bombings involving HMEs originated from the Republic. These earliest crude devices were unreliable and many IRA volunteers were killed due to premature explosions. As a result, the IRA centralised manufacture of the chief components, and IRA engineers were required to have the training necessary to complete the devices properly. The Hibernia Magazine reported that over 48,000 lbs of explosives had been detonated in Northern Ireland in the first six months of 1973, most of them IRA bombs. The New York Times on September 25, 1979, reported:
Besides rifles and machine guns, which they appear to have in abundance, the Provos’ principal weapons are bombs, like the one that they planted in Lord Mountbatten's fishing boat last month.
In past years, the I.R.A. got a lot of its explosives from the Irish Republic, often in donations from sympathetic builders or quarry operators. But as increased security dried up that source, the Provos have apparently begun manufacturing their own explosives, from commercially available fertilizers.
To accommodate the steady supply of HMEs, the IRA Army Council established dozens of "bomb factories" in the Republic. For example, in 1973, an Irish man secretly representing IRA GHQ leased a factory in an industrial estate near Stannaway Road, County Dublin under the name "Light Machine Services"; it was in fact a secret IRA arms factory, with all employees being IRA members both from the Republic and Northern Ireland. A British report from its Dublin embassy in 1975 identified an IRA arms factory in the north Dublin village of Donabate as "a centre for the manufacture of grenades, rockets and mortars. The Provisionals were careful to work 'nine to five' hours in order not to attract suspicion." It also expressed that "it must be presumed that other factories exist or are planned for this purpose."
By August 1973, Light Machine Services were producing firearms and mortars; the latter was first used against British troops in County Tyrone that year. The result was considered unsatisfactory, so the IRA decided to establish training camps southwest of the Republic specifically to operate mortars. A local retired bachelor farmer in the area allowed the IRA to use his land and farmhouse for billets. From 31 October 1973 to March 1974, these mortar camps were held every four days, while the other three were devoted to manufacturing mortar rounds in the milking parlour and preparing for the next group of recruits. One newspaper at the end of 1973 noted that "nowadays, the Provos have home-produced mortars which are near professional"; they would soon earn the grudging respect of the British Army. These mortars were subsequently used in the 2 May 1974 attack on UDR Clogher barracks, killing Private Eva Martin of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR).
British counter-terrorism expert Andy Oppenheimer wrote that: