Information on current, previous and future cabinet ministers was kept in files by Military Intelligence in 1975, State Papers made public today reveal, writes Deaglán de Bréadún.
The documents, released under the 30-year rule, also show that files were kept on political parties, unions, women's organisations and journalists.
Despite the fact that he was minister for posts and telegraphs at the time and by far the most trenchant critic of the Provisional IRA and the security threat it posed, a file was kept on Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien.
A file was also kept on former health minister Dr Noel Browne, including a report that he had been offered a position as "chief of psychiatric medicine" by the Gadafy regime in Libya. Dr Browne, who died in 1997, was then an independent member of Seanad Éireann for TCD.
Future Supreme Court judge and president of the Law Commission Catherine McGuinness features in a file on her husband, journalist and broadcaster Proinsias Mac Aonghusa, who died in September 2003.
There is also a file entitled "Women's Liberation Movement" which features a letter to The Irish Times from future education minister Gemma Hussey and future junior minister for Women's Affairs Nuala Fennell, with their names underlined.
Indeed, writing to this newspaper on a mildly-controversial subject was almost a guarantee of getting into a file. Even a group of eight pupils in the fifth year Spanish class at Mount St Joseph College, Roscrea, caught the attention of Military Intelligence when they wrote to protest over five executions carried out in the last days of the Franco regime.
Meanwhile, a declassified file from the department of the taoiseach reveals that former trade unionist Phil Flynn was kept under surveillance by gardaí during the IRA kidnapping of Dutch industrialist Tiede Herrema in 1975, even though he had been asked to mediate in the affair.
Another file from the department of the taoiseach shows that Earl Mountbatten offered his Irish residence, Classiebawn Castle in Co Sligo, to the nation four years before he was killed by a Provisional IRA bomb.
Cabinet Papers are traditionally released 30 years after the events they describe on the first day of the new year. This year because of the impact of Freedom of Information legislation in the UK, and as New Year's Day falls on Sunday, the London and Belfast archives brought forward the release date to today, and Dublin followed suit.