Conor Lally
One of the victims of the 1974 Dublibombings yesterday told how he was pronounced dead in Jervis Street Hospital and his body stored in the mortuary before staff realised he was alive, and rushed him to theatre for life-saving surgery.
Mr Derek Byrne was speaking at the opening day of the Oireachtas joint subcommittee on justice's public hearings into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings following the publication of Mr Justice Barron's report. The subcommittee will report to the Government in March on whether a public tribunal of inquiry should be set up to investigate the bombings and allegations of collusion between the UVF and British security forces.
Mr Byrne was 14 when he was caught up in the bomb at Parnell Street on May 17th, 1974. He sustained serious head injuries. He was employed as a petrol pump attendant at Westbrook Motors and was filling a car for customer Mr Pat Fay when the bomb went off. Mr Fay (47), from Ardee, Co Louth, was killed instantly.
"I was put in a \ vault and it seems I woke up," said Mr Byrne. "They had it in the papers the next day that I was dead."
Ms Brigid Fitzpatrick, Sean McDermott Street, Dublin, was with her two young sons on Parnell Street when the bomb exploded. She told how she ran with her boys to the Rotunda Hospital to seek treatment. It wasn't until she got there that she felt a large piece of metal embedded in her back which had punctured her lung. A baby's pram "flew past my eyes when the bomb went off". The next morning a dead baby "with her soother still in her mouth" was found on the roof of the Welcome Inn pub. "I remember seeing one woman whose glasses were embedded into her eyes. Another man had the top of his head missing."
Mr Tim Grace (65) lost his wife Breda (34) in the Talbot Street bomb. The Portmarnock couple's only child, a son, was just 13 months at the time. "My wife was a beautiful young woman," he said.
Mr Frank Massey's 21-year-old daughter Anna, from Sallynoggin in Dublin, died in the Leinster Street blast. She had celebrated her 21st birthday a week earlier with her twin sister Muriel.
Mr Massey said his sense of loss has been compounded by Government inaction in the search to find those who planted the bombs. "Muriel doesn't talk about it, she can't. She lost half herself. I have come to terms with the loss of my daughter. But what I suffer from is that for 25 of the last 30 years nobody wanted to know. I was treated like a leper. No TD, no media wanted to know Frank Massey."
Ms Iris Boyd's father, Archie Harper (73), lost his life in the Monaghan bomb. Although conscious for some time in hospital, his daughter was not allowed to speak to him or to see him. "That's my biggest regret," she said. "Life has never been the same for us as a family. Everything changed. That's all I can say."
Ms Alice O'Brien lost her sister Anna O'Brien (22), brother-in- law John O'Brien (24) and nieces Jacqueline (1 year and 5 months) and Anne-Marie (5 months) in the Parnell Street bomb.
"Anna was only identified from an earring she was wearing and her husband from a tattoo." She said her father, Paddy Doyle, had been shocked by the scenes when he scoured the hospitals and the morgue for his daughter.
"It was like a slaughterhouse. They were throwing pieces of limbs here and there to make up a body," she said recounting her late father's account.
Mr John Molloy, a survivor of the Parnell Street bomb, said the scene after the explosion "was like looking into hell". He was 18 years old at the time.
"There were bits and pieces of bodies everywhere, relentless moaning. I went back to the scene at around 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. I just felt I had to go back. I never felt such an air of solitude. There were policemen on top of buildings picking up debris, perhaps parts of bodies, I don't know."
Some months later a cheque for £50 arrived in the post from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal to compensate for his leg injuries. "I had been brought up humble. I was living with my mother at the time, she had just been burgled. I was just glad I had something to give her."