Unanswered questions about the Arms Crisis

Irish Times – Wed, Mar 28, 2012

Sir, – Dessie O’Malley’s letter (March 26th), connecting Neil T Blaney to “ethnic bigotry” is another disgusting display of Mr O’Malley’s self-righteous and delusional portrayal of the Arms Crisis, of which Mr O’Malley had a hand to play in its outcome. There are a lot of questions that we would like Mr O’Malley to answer, with regard to his actions in this whole murky saga.

He talks of Fianna Fáil choosing “constitutional republicanism” over “ethnic bigotry” as a reason to expel my father from the party. The reason they expelled him was to cover up for their lies. Jack Lynch and senior members of the Fianna Fáil Cabinet knew that there were actions being taken to import arms to this country. Neil Blaney never went to trial because he never had a case to answer, ie, he was innocent of all alleged wrong-doing.

The late Kevin Boland TD knew this to be the truth and consequently resigned from his position as Minister, as he could not be a party to the deception that Lynch, O’Malley, Gibbons and other members of the party were perpetrating. The reason that only Lynch and a select group of the Cabinet knew of the plan to import arms was that Lynch was afraid the British would find out. It was a classic case of “plausible deniability”.

At the time Britain accounted for over 73 per cent of our exports. The morning that my father was fired from government, Jack Lynch was late for the Parliamentary Party meeting. The reason he was delayed was that he was meeting with the British ambassador, and we suggest that you draw your own conclusions as to the topic under discussion.

We have called in the past for a public inquiry into the Arms Crisis so we can find out exactly who did what and who covered up what. Dessie O’Malley was working behind the scenes to bolster the Jack Lynch support within the party at the time. There was a power struggle for the leadership and they used my father, and many others, as a scapegoat.

To put yet another slur on our father 40 years later is disgraceful. Our father is deceased and cannot defend his good name. It is ironic that Mr O’Malley chooses to denigrate him once again, especially when we remember that without our father’s hard work during the Mr O’Malley byelection, he is unlikely to have been elected to the Dáil at the time. – Yours, etc,

EAMONN & ANNRAOI BLANEY,

Muscat,

Sultanate of Oman.

© 2012 The Irish Times