Dónal de Róiste was 24 when he was dismissed from the Army. He speaks to Joe Humphreys about his career, his fight to clear his name and suggestions that he was removed because he associated with subversives
Dónal de Róiste was 18 years old when he joined the Army Cadets. "I was young and it seemed like a grow-up thing to do," he said. An uncle whom he admired greatly had served as a commandant, and de Róiste himself had been in the FCA and enjoyed the experience.
The eldest of four siblings, he had been a source of pride to his parents, Seán and Christina, from Clonmel, Co Tipperary. "My picture was in the local paper when I was called to the cadets."
He made steady progress within the Defence Forces with just one blemish on his record - in 1964, when he was found "guilty of the serious offence of bringing two contraceptives \ into the \ school". As punishment, he was confined to the Curragh barracks for three months.
The incident didn't stop him from being promoted in 1967 to the rank of lieutenant and assigned to the Signal Corps.
In an interview this week looking back at his career, de Róiste said he was neither approached nor cautioned on any matter until April 25th, 1969 when, suddenly and without warning, he was placed under armed guard and driven to Dublin from his base in Athlone.
According to his recollection of events, he was interrogated without being told on what basis. He requested a court martial, which would have required specific charges being put to him, but it was refused. Instead, on June 27th 1969, he was informed he had been retired by the president and had been given 12 hours to leave his barracks.
"It was awful. Straight away, I went from someone who had status in the community to being literally homeless. I had no income. I had no references. I couldn't go home. I was disgraced." The dismissal led to a rift between de Róiste and his father, a Fianna Fáil loyalist who was unable to countenance the idea that the then president, Eamon de Valera, may have erred in retiring his son. They were never reconciled and de Róiste's father died last January.
In his own words "unemployed and unemployable", de Róiste emigrated to the US in 1971. He worked in the Pennsylvania Steel Mills and married a US citizen, with whom he had two children, Dara (25) and Sinéad (23). He divorced subsequently and returned to Ireland, taking up residence in Ballincollig, Co Cork. There, he took up a part-time job driving a school bus.
He said he had left the issue of his dismissal behind him until 1997, when suddenly he was thrown in the public limelight. He said he had been "helping on the peripherals" of the presidential election campaign of his youngest sister, Adi Roche, when he woke up one morning to newspaper headlines alleging he had been involved in the IRA.
"I was being labelled a Provo, a terrorist. I was accused on the doorstep of criminal and subversive activity. It was an awful feeling." The publicity got so bad that some local parents began ringing his employer asking the school whether it knew it had "a Provo driving the bus".
The incident brought with it fresh trauma, and he said he felt he had no choice but to address it once and for all. "I realised I couldn't run from bullying forever. I had to tackle it."
He said he had studied the documentation on Comdt Seán T. O'Kelly and the road incident of November 1967, and said he believed it was a plausible explanation for his dismissal. Whatever the reason, he said, "it was frame-up. No doubt about it."
He said he had heard various rumours about his alleged involvement with the Republican splinter group Saor Éire, and he strenuously denied them. "Saor Éire was an invention I'd never heard of," he said.
Of the suggestion that he had been photographed at the Barnes/ McCormack IRA funeral in 1969, he noted: "If you had given me a million bucks back then to say who were Barnes/McCormack I wouldn't have known." He added that he had yet to meet anyone who had seen the alleged photograph.
De Róiste, a traditional music enthusiast, admitted he had spoken to suspected militants, but only unwittingly. In his free time, he said, he attended music sessions with other officers at bars such as O'Donoghue's at Merrion Row, Dublin. He said he realised it was "frowned upon" by senior officers, "but we all did it anyway. If you wanted to see Liam Clancy or Ronnie Drew where else could you go but O'Donoghue's? It was a great place."
He conceded, by socialising in such places, "inevitably, we were going to be hanging out with a subversive. It was a given." However, he stressed, at that time, he would not have known any such individual. "If I had known that sort of information I would have reported it."
He added the Troubles had yet to begin in earnest in the North, and "there wouldn't have been any kind of whiff of cordite around these people at that time".
He said he had heard rumours since then that the Army was afraid young officers "would be subverted by the IRA, who were allegedly tapping into soldiers and getting ready for a Northern blow-up. But I don't know if that's true."
In hindsight, he said, one could call him "innocent" or "naïve". But, he said, he was not guilty of any wrongdoing. "I was 24. We had got no grounding in security. Yeah, I was naïve - if naïve means going around singing ballads with your officer friends, and mixing with civilians. But it's not like we were subversives."
As to whether he would have been considered a troublemaker, he said: "Maybe I took out the guitar once too often in the mess. But I was given no caution or warning . . . But I was a suitable officer, suitable enough to send up to the Army auction at Clancy Barracks, the day before I was arrested."
The auction in question, and particularly his meeting with a suspected republican activist there, appeared to have been core to de Róiste's dismissal. De Róiste said he had known the man in question as a "boozing buddy" of a prominent musician. "They had me knowing him as a subversive beforehand, which of course I didn't, because if I did I would have reported him. This is guilt by association."
He said he couldn't recall the exact discussion with the alleged subversive but it wasn't a long discussion. "It might have been 'Hi, how are you?' or 'Funny seeing you here'. I have no idea."
He said he was still not aware whether this was the reason for his dismissal, as none had been given to him. "The real problem is we don't have an official version. All we have are the innuendos."
He now believed the rumours were started by Comdt O'Kelly in an attempt to disgrace him ahead of a possible trial over a road traffic incident at which the two soldiers would have given contradictory evidence. De Róiste said senior officers would have frowned on his contradicting of one of them. Their thinking, he said, would have been, "What's this guy doing siding with a civvy over one of our own? Has this guy got no loyalty?"
He added that once he had been dismissed, "they had no choice but to float these things. I am not faulting the Army on them having the right to weed out whomever they want. But they have got to do it by the rule of the law.
"If you were arresting a murder or rapist now you'd have to caution them. I wasn't cautioned. So I didn't get a hint of justice at any stage of the proceedings.
"It's easy for the militarists to say: 'Well, the Army wouldn't have done it unless there was something.' "
De Róiste, now aged 57, said he did not want to be in the limelight, "but I've no choice but to fight to clear my name. I am certain I am innocent, and I want them to sign off on it. Either give me my files or declare me innocent."