Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy by T. Ryle Dwyer Page A

– blinded by an irrational fear of the south – reacted hysterically. The Dublin government had no intention of invading.
    Even Kevin Boland, one of the cabinet’s most outspoken proponents of assisting northern Nationalists, believed it would be disastrous for the Irish army to become involved. ‘Places contiguous to the border could obviously be assisted effectively,’ he contended, ‘but to do so would mean the wholesale slaughter of Nationalists (or Catholics) in other areas where there was no defence available. I feel reasonably certain that the others also saw this and that none of them visualised an actual incursion.’
    Faced with the irrational frenzy of the heavily armed Unionist community, northern Nationalists were extremely vulnerable. They established defence committees and appealed to Dublin for arms to protect themselves.
    Dublin reacted in a number of ways. It launched a propaganda campaign to enlist international sympathy for the Nationalist position, but there was little the government could do in a tangible way. ‘There was a feeling among the government, and among the community as a whole, that we could not do a great deal deal to help the people of the north,’ Charlie explained. ‘We knew that a lot of people were suffering very severe hardship and distress and the government decided to be generous in coming to their aid. I was appointed as the person to see that this aid was given as freely and generously as possible.’
    â€˜There was no sum of money specified,’ he continued. ‘I was instructed by the government to make money available on a generous scale to whatever extent we required.’ He was given virtual carte blanche to help the Nationalists. ‘I have never seen a government decision that was drafted in such wide terms,’ Charles H. Murray, the secretary of the Department of Finance, said afterwards.
    On 20 August 1969 Peter Berry, the secretary of the Department of Justice, reported that an unidentified cabinet minister had recently told a prominent member of the IRA that the authorities would not interfere with IRA operations planned for Northern Ireland, if the IRA called off all its activities within the twenty-six counties.
    â€˜That could have been me,’ Charlie told the cabinet. ‘I was asked to see someone casually and it transpired to be this person. There was nothing to it, it was entirely casual.’
    Berry ‘was completely reassured’. Charlie had taken a strong stand against the IRA as Minister for Justice at the beginning of the decade and it seemed inconceivable that he would become involved with them now, but the security people were not reassured. ‘They repeated that their sources had proved reliable in the past’, Berry noted.
    Capt. James J. Kelly happened to be on a visit to in Derry at the time. On returning to Dublin he wrote a report of his impressions of events for his commanding officer, Col Michael Hefferon, the director of military intelligence. Hefferon welcomed this report from Capt. Kelly, an officer with 20 years’ army experience, with the last ten years in G2, military intelligence. At the time even G2 had been caught unawares by the ferocity of events in the north.
    â€˜I was very glad of any information,’ Col Hefferon explained. ‘I had to run around and try to find out the people that would give me the most because you had a whole lot of rumours going which had no foundation to them.’ He ordered Kelly to maintain his northern contacts. ‘It is now necessary to harness all opinion in the state in a concerted drive towards achieving the aim of unification,’ Capt. Kelly wrote in his report of 23 August 1969. ‘This means accepting the possibility of armed action of some sort, as the ultimate solution.’ He added that ‘if civil war embracing the area was to result because of unwillingness to accept that war is the continuation of