Remembering loyalist Dublin-Monaghan bloodbath 50 years on: Bereaved eyewitness says she sees no distinction between UVF and IRA - 'they are all the same'

By Adam Kula
Published 17th May 2024, 06:00 BST
Updated 17th May 2024, 08:58 BST
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A woman who lost her father to the worst single day of bloodshed in the entire Troubles has said she sees no difference between the UVF, UDA, INLA or IRA: all she sees are terrorists.

Through tears, Iris Hall described her recollection of the Dublin/Monaghan bombings of exactly 50 years ago today, saying she still "lives with it every day".

The bombings in Dublin and Monaghan on May 17, 1974 killed 35 people (including two unborn children), and wounded many more.

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Though the Omagh bomb of 1998 (with 31 fatalities) remains the worst single device, the co-ordinated four-bomb atrocity of Dublin/Monaghan remains the worst overall attack.

A mural celebrating the UVF, Shankill Road, 1994A mural celebrating the UVF, Shankill Road, 1994
A mural celebrating the UVF, Shankill Road, 1994

– The story of what happened and what led up to it is at this link –

Mrs Hall, a widow who is now aged 77, had been visiting Monaghan town with her father on that fateful day.

She was looking to buy a birthday present while her father Archie Harper, a publican, was visiting the local bottling factory.

When the carnage began she was at her aunt's house in the town, while her father was in his car in the town centre, sitting just over the road from the device.

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A memorial to the Monaghan bombings is pictured in the town centre of the Irish border town of Monaghan on March 5, 2019A memorial to the Monaghan bombings is pictured in the town centre of the Irish border town of Monaghan on March 5, 2019
A memorial to the Monaghan bombings is pictured in the town centre of the Irish border town of Monaghan on March 5, 2019

A blast shook the house she was in and Mrs Hall made her way to the scene.

"I'll never forget what I saw that day," she said.

"It was a wet, drizzly evening at 6.58pm. It was just chaos everywhere – people lying everywhere. It was just horrendous what I saw."

She was asked if time helps to heal things.

Firemen on Talbot Street, Dublin, use newspapers from a wrecked newspaper stand to cover a dead body after three car bombs exploded simultaneously in the city, 17th May 1974. The UVF later claimed responsibility for the attacks. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Firemen on Talbot Street, Dublin, use newspapers from a wrecked newspaper stand to cover a dead body after three car bombs exploded simultaneously in the city, 17th May 1974. The UVF later claimed responsibility for the attacks. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Firemen on Talbot Street, Dublin, use newspapers from a wrecked newspaper stand to cover a dead body after three car bombs exploded simultaneously in the city, 17th May 1974. The UVF later claimed responsibility for the attacks. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

"Not really no," she said, crying. "I live with it every day. My dad didn't deserve that.

"I'd like to sit across a table and look somebody in the eye that did that."

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The device had been planted by the UVF and most of the dead were Catholics, though her father and another victim in Monaghan, George Williamson, were Protestants.

It so happened that Mrs Hall is a relative of Billy Fox, a Protestant member of Fine Gael who had been killed by the IRA just a year earlier.

And later on her son found himself right next to an IRA bomb attack upon soldiers in Lisburn, and survived.

Asked if she saw a difference between paramilitary groups, Mrs Hall said: "Not at all. They're all the same. They're all terrorists."

On Friday she and family members from as far away as Texas and Portugal will gather in Monaghan for an evening service marking the atrocity.