Portlaoise and the meaning of duty

14 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 15

n 1984, the Assistant General Secretary of

the Prison O cers Association, Tom Hoare,

strongly criticised conditions within the

Prison, stating that sta were forced by

senior management in the Prison to use

excessive force against prisoners. He also

criticised the then Governor of Portlaoise Prison,

William Reilly, and the Minister of Justice Michael

Noonan stating: “I accuse the minister of

negligence in this area. I accuse the management

of Portlaoise Prison of being indifferent to

complaints. I would hate to be a prisoner making

a complaint”.

Worse, at the Prison O cers Association 1984

conference, a delegate from Portlaoise Prison,

Larry O’Neill, told the conference: “If Hitler wanted

generals today he would ﬁ nd plenty of them in

Portlaoise. After the war the Nazis said many of

them were doing their duty and that is what the

management in Portlaoise are saying today”.

Seán O’Brien began his career as a prison

o cer in 1980, aged twenty. The ‘job’ consisted

of dealing with the most di cult and dangerous

individuals in Irish society. The, typically

extraordinarily young, prison o cers who dealt

with subversive prisoners received no specialist

training whatsoever, nor access to any welfare or

mental-health services. O’Brien worked through

the so-called ‘dirty protests’, when o cers

patrolled E-Block landing enmired in a mixture

of urine and excrement.

O’Brien witnessed prisoners receiving

When in 1988 he stopped an IRA evasion

of extradition in apparent breach of

Charles Haughey’s plans, what followed

for prison ofﬁ cer Seán O’Brien was not

a medal but dismissal,collapsed mental

health, and an extraordinary succession

of, ongoing, ofﬁ cially frustrated attempts

to expose the truth

By Michael Smith

unwarranted strip searches, punishment

beatings, being kept in cells without sunlight or

sometimes with excess heat from prison boilers,

with no exercise and contaminated food -

conditions evidently contrary to the Geneva

Convention – all under the watch of prison

management.

After one strip search, he recalls the Governor

at the time, Bill Reilly – a man with a reputation

for being particularly brutal to Republicans

Portlaoise and

the meaning

of duty

Stck Medl:

government filed

to seek retrospective pplictions

for it from prison ofﬁ cers

Portloise Prison nd lnding (inset)

NEWS

14 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 15

of Engagement from this period acutely

distinguish between warning and containment

shots. The ﬁ rst audible warning, as one would

expect, is ordinarily ﬁ red into the air, posing no

danger to anyone’s life. The Rules also prohibit

ﬁ ring at a target that is running away.

O’Brien says he felt the reverberations through

his body from the ﬂ ying bullets, which, he says,

only narrowly missed him. A colleague witness

stated he could see bits of tarmac ﬂ ying all

around O cer O’Brien as bullets hit the ground

in front of him. Nevertheless, he managed to

stop McVeigh before he could leap out on top of

the wall.

With the help of another o cer, O’Brien

brought him into the custody of two gardaí on the

South wall of the Prison, and he then made his

way into the main Prison building to resume his

shift.

A report detailed, in an excellent article by

Daniele Idini on Cassandra Voices website, cited

a 2022 letter from Martin Ferris TD, then PIRA

o cer in command of Portlaoise Prison:

“From where I was watching in recreational

room E3, a number of bullets hit the space

between O cer O’Brien and McVeigh. Pat

McVeigh attempted to climb the farm wall onto

Dublin Road with the help of some supporters

from outside and certainly would have succeeded

only for O cer O’Brien grabbing his legs and

preventing his escape”.

Not long after O’Brien had caught his breath,

he received an order from the radio room of

E-Block to report to Governor Ned Harkin’s o ce.

As he was on his way there, he recalls being

praised and cheered by some colleagues.

As he walked into the Governor’s o ce, he

was presented with a freshly typed, false version

of that morning’s events, which he was ordered

to make a copy of in his own handwriting right

Contrary to the Governor’s

orders, his Deputy Governor,

Mick Horan, physically pushed

Sean and ordered him into a

shoot-to-kill area of the Prison

operated by the Army

The Prison Governor, Ned Harkin, was a PIRA

mole who had given explosives, guns, and

keys to the PIRA. O’Brien alleges Stack was

about to expose Ned Harkin when he was

murdered by PIRA”

– telling him and the late Chief Prison O cer

Brian Stack, who was working with him at the

time, to “bate them again”, after Stack told the

Governor they had completed the searches of

every political prisoner in E-Block. O’Brien recalls

being physically reluctant to obey the order as

his arm was exhausted from the beatings they’d

inﬂ icted. The IRA subsequently shot Brian Stack

in the neck in 1983 and he died 18 months later.

O’Brien claims that many prison sta self-

medicated by drinking heavily to cope with the

stress that the ‘job’ entailed. This numbing of the

pain included drinking at dinner and returning

to the pub after duty; in fact many prison o cers

were intoxicated on duty. Indeed, he says he

often witnessed prison o cers asleep on the

security landings from the e ects of drink.

On 18 May 1988, a crowd of protesters and

foreign media gathered at the main entrance in

front of the Prison on the Dublin Road. Patrick

McVeigh, a member of the PIRA – known as Flash

– was scheduled to be released that day.

However, before being extradited to Northern

Ireland, he was expected to be re-arrested by the

Garda as soon as he stepped outside the main

gate.

Tensions were running high in the Prison at the

time, and the issue had attracted considerable

public attention. McVeigh was a political

prisoner, and extradition laws did not cover

prisoners with such status. Nonetheless, the

extradition machine was in motion. A crowd of

his sympathisers greeted him at the gate.

Seán O’Brien had elbowed his way in through

the unfriendly crowd a few minutes before

McVeigh was escorted to the Garda waiting for

him outside the gate. From there, he would be

conveyed to Court to get the extradition

legitimised.

McVeigh was somehow allowed to evade his

escort, casually walked up to the gate and kissed

his wife, then turned and started inspecting a

bike before running along the inner perimeter of

the outer wall in the hope of jumping out on to

the Dublin Road.

Contrary to the Governor’s orders, his Deputy

Governor, Mick Horan, physically pushed O’Brien

and ordered him into a shoot-to-kill area of the

Prison operated by the Army.

Accomplices were hanging o the prison wall

to lift McVeigh over and out, where a motorbike

awaited to aid his escape.

It was then that Irish Army personnel stationed

on the roof and walls of the prison ﬁ red a hail of

g u n ﬁ r e in front of O’Brien. The Irish Army’s Rules

then and there.

That version of events would have protected

Deputy Governor Mick Horan, who had not given

chase. He was the o cer in charge the morning

of McVeigh’s release and re-arrest. It would have

attributed most of the blame to another Assistant

Chief Prison O cer, Paddy Dunne, who was by

then already being suspended by Deputy Horan

as a suspected accomplice to the escape. Dunne

was subsequently mistreated by the Garda

Heavy Gang, who tried to force a confession.

O’Brien refused to comply with the illegal

order on dozens of occasions during subsequent

days though several other prison officers

acquiesced.

On 14 June 1988, Seán O’Brien disclosed at a

meeting in the Department of Justice

headquarters to an official, Noel O’Beara,

various dysfunctionalities in the prison:

The Prison Governor, Ned Harkin, was widely

regarded as a PIRA mole who had given keys to

the PIRA. Governor Harkin had been involved in

the handing of a loaded handgun to a political

prisoner who had pulled the trigger several times

trying to shoot Seán O’Brien’s brother Hugh and

another prison o cer during a 1985 escape

attempt. The gun jammed and failed. O’Brien

alleges Stack was about to expose Ned Harkin

when he was murdered by PIRA.

O’Brien claims he was ordered to make

recordings of visits between PIRA political

prisoners and their legal teams which were

handed over to the Garda Heavy Gang.

A prison o cer, JG Burke, took his life in part

due to prolonged bullying by management.

A heavy gang of prison o cers was operating

in the prison beating prisoners.

O’Brien made a disclosure in 2022 which

beneﬁ ted from recent statutory protections.

That protected disclosure included the

substance of the much earlier one as well as that

Deputy Horan did not chase after the escaping

prisoner. Both the Department of Justice and the

Prison Service have failed to respond to the

disclosure.

In response to O’Brien’s refusal to provide a

false testimony, threats of dismissal, such as

Governor Harkin’s ordering Seán to “leave your

Sen O’Brien: deserves medl; got

dismissed from prison service nd

thirty-ﬁ ve yers of mentl nquish

16 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 PB

uniform at the gate on the way out” the bullying

became more frequent.

He was prohibited from working on the

landings where the prisoners were held. This

meant that he was left doing nothing during his

shifts; Seán had a target on his back, and sta

were afraid to be seen talking to him.

Ferris wrote:

“Tensions were high within the Prison in

the aftermath of this incident, and I, as the

spokesperson for the Republican prisoners,

suggested to prison Governor Harkin that

O cer O’Brien should not return to the

prison landings until things calmed down. I

personally never saw prison o cer Seán

O’Brien within the conﬁ nes of Portlaoise

Prison from that day forward.

Despite the viable threat to O’Brien

neither Governor Harkin nor the Department

of Justice provided any protection for O cer

O’Brien. Why?”.

In that situation, the ﬁ rst indications of

deteriorating mental health became evident

despite the fact he’s been an accomplished

athlete participating in the full ‘Iron Man’

Triathlon.

He su ered recurring nightmares and intense

paranoia, which started to make his days

unbearable.

At that stage, he asked the Prison O cer’s

Association representative, Noel Tuohy, for

assistance. He was told that it was not possible

for the prison to dismiss him in that fashion. The

Association was already pressurising the

Department of Justice to reinstate Paddy Dunne

and trying to bring to light the dynamics at play

in the attempted escape.

The Department of Defence consistently

denied that the shooting could have endangered

an o cer on duty, as reported by the Cork

Examiner on 25 May, 1988.

As recently as July 2022, Brian Stanley, a Sinn

Féin TD and Chair of the Public Accounts

Committee, asked the Minister for Justice: “if

there are any ﬁ les being withheld for national

security reasons that relate to the attempted

escape of a prisoner on 18 May 1988 at Portlaoise

prison?”.

The Minister responded: “I am advised that

the record in question was previously considered

as not suitable for release by the Irish Prison

Service”.

On 23 May 1989, at approximately 3 p.m.,

there was a knock on the door of O’Brien’s

parental home. It was Senior Prison O cer Mick

Horan and Garda Sergeant Kevin Ford looking for

Seán and his brother, Hugh, O’Brien who was

also employed at Portlaoise Prison to tell them

that they were both being dismissed. They were

told not to turn up at work the following day. His

parents are instructed “to tell Seán to leave his

uniform at the gate”. They were dismissed by

verbal notice delivered to their bewildered

parents, without any o cial document being

issued by the Irish government. Furthermore the

Department of Justice Chief Medical O cer, Dr

John Geoghegan, did not see Seán O’Brien

before his dismissal had been ﬁ nalised. O’Brien

concedes the prison’s claim that his attendance

record was poor – 682 days absent between

1980 and 1989 – but most of it was due to an

injury on duty which occurred in 1983. The

mental health injuries he had su ered while on

duty including during the McVeigh debacle, had

been entirely ignored in considering the

dismissal — a breach of the 1947 rules of Prison

and 1956 civil servants regulations which posit

a “duty of care” on state employers.

During that period, Seán O’Brien claims he

was not in the right mental state to follow up on

his case. It seems he let it slide. What he had

endured by then in terms of psychological

distress he is reluctant to recollect, apart from to

liken it to hell.

After his alleged dismissal, O’Brien developed

an alter ego.

For example, he opened a security ﬁ rm with

his brother and, in 2007 landed a helicopter onto

the car park of a shopping centre, to, he says,

“collect a set of keys”.

The proceedings against the Department of

Justice that began in 1991 were interrupted in

2008 when O’Brien’s solicitor, David O’Shea of

O’Donovan Solicitors, received a prison

sentence.

O’Shea’s ﬁ le on O’Brien disappeared without

a trace when O’Donovan’s collapsed.

It was only in 2017 that he was able to instruct

another lawyer, Kevin Winters of KRWLaw in

Belfast, to pursue the case. By the time he served

a notice of an intention to proceed in 2019, 26

years had elapsed.

In a Court of Appeal judgment delivered in

2022, it was decided that “witnesses for the

defence (Minister for Justice) cannot reasonably

be expected to give evidence that could be

regarded as reliable after such an interval”.

Nevertheless, KRWLaw are pursuing cases for

misfeasance against multiple state agencies and

have obtained a davits from many of the parties

to the relevant actions in Portlaoise nearly 40

years ago.

As regards the politics of the whole pig’s ear,

Noel Treacy TD, Minister for State in charge of

Prisons who was Minister when the ﬁ le was

active, requested a full review of the entire case

after reading the ﬁ le in 2011. But in May 2015,

then Minister Frances Fitzgerald TD refused to

honour Treacy’s request.

Treacy subsequently declared that the

extradition was never supposed to happen

because the Taoiseach in 1988. Charles Haughey

did not want it to. “Charlie was never going to

extradite one of his own; You were never

supposed to catch him. It was an arranged

escape”.

This implies certain o cers in the Prison

Service were acting under orders to facilitate

McVeigh’s avoidance of arrest.

Over the last few years, the case has gained a

certain amount of media coverage, mainly

concerning the dismissal and sick days. However,

very little attention has been paid to Seán

O’Brien’s disclosure to the Minister of Justice in

1988.

The Department of Defence, to this day,

refuses to release the records in relation to the

shooting incident, requested through a Freedom

of Information Request in 2016, saying:

“The release of this information may

potentially compromise the security of the

Defence Forces in preparation for peace and

security operations at home and overseas”.

It is one nonsense, in a miasma of them

reflecting the transcendence of the ethos

described so vividly at the Prison O cers

Association conference nearly 40 years ago.

KRWLaw are pursuing cases for

misfeasance against multiple

state agencies and have

obtained afﬁ davits from many

of the parties to the relevant

actions in Portlaoise though the

Department of Defence refuses

to release the records in relation

to the shooting incident

Still of 1988 RTÉ News’s

brodcst of McVeigh’s cpture