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You never forget your first bomb. On April 12, 1989, the solid whump of a 680-kilogram car bomb set off by the Irish Republican Army was enough to stop me and my classmates at St Peter’s Boys’ School dead in our tracks.
Our heads snapped right, watching the growing cloud of smoke rising from Charlotte Street, the site of our little town’s fortified police barracks. That blast – which I remember more as a feeling than a sound – killed Joanne Reilly, 20, who had been working in Heately & Morgan’s hardware shop beside the station belonging to the RUC, the local police force. It also injured nine police and 31 civilians.
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The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig is located in lush and lovely countryside populated by more cows than people and rather inconveniently located 75 miles from Dublin and Belfast on what the lady in the airport car rental office called “the far side Monaghan near the County Cavan line.” The nearest village, five miles to the east, is Newbliss, settled way back by Scotch Presbyterians whose descendants seem to keep the even tenor of their heritage. Pubs are scarce and open for fewer hours than the bank. “Sure ’tis a quiet place,” the villagers tell you. The creative folk at Annaghmakerrig call it “positively moribund.”Of Protestant stock himself, Tyrone Guthrie, the distinguished director, bequeathed this forested 451-acre estate, inherited from his mother’s side of the family, as a work-place for “artists, writers and other like persons.”
During the troubles and particularly in the 1970s border security was undertaken by unarmed Garda backed up units of the Irish Army. In particular, after the bombing and assassinations in border areas by loyalist gangs run by the British Army, generally Garda checkpoints were a few miles ‘south’ manned by Garda and a platoon of Infantry. Some main crossings for example Blacklion, Lifford etc did have permanent Irish Army checkpoints for a time.
The Irish Army’s ability to meet a border security role was however severely compromised about a decade ago when its 4th Brigade HQ in Athlone was closed down. It had coordinated operations over 10 counties, including Connaught, the Leinster Midlands and the Ulster Counties of Donegal and Cavan, with 263km of the border.
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