'The truth. That's all we wanted'

One family's story: Kitty Holland hears the story of the O'Brien family,who were all killed in the Parnell Street bombing

One family's story: Kitty Holland hears the story of the O'Brien family,who were all killed in the Parnell Street bombing

Anna O'Brien was a jolly type - the life and soul of the party, a real Tom Jones girl - recalls her younger sister, Alice O'Brien.

She was 22 that May afternoon in 1974 when she went with her husband and their two baby girls to a local shop to pick up a few messages.

"She lived in Gardiner Street flats, just around the corner from where the bomb went off," says Alice.

READ MORE

"It was about half-five in the day. They went out to the shops, and never came back."

Each member of the small family - Anna, her husband John (24) and their two girls, Jacqueline (17 months) and Anne-Marie (five months) - was killed in the bomb that exploded in Parnell Street, Dublin, on May 17th, 29 years ago.

"She was the eldest of 14 kids, my mother's first child, and the babies were the only grandchildren at the time. She was a great doer, always making cakes for the younger kids and putting up decorations at Christmas."

The family did not know Anna and her family had been caught up in the bomb until the following day.

"It was about seven the next evening. My Aunt Chrissie lived across the road from them and she noticed they weren't at home and she came out to us in Finglas.

"It was my Dad who went to the mortuary. He identified her by one of her earrings.

"He said it was like a cattle market there - legs and arms everywhere thrown together to make bodies."

Alice says now she didn't realise the impact the loss of her sister had on her parents until she had her own children.

"Well you don't. You don't know 'till you have your own how much you love them. My mother never got over it, went really quiet into herself. Like she was there with us, but we ended up having to rear each other because her mind was always somewhere else.

"After Anna died, the house was dead, dead as a doornail. Can you imagine that with 13 kids? There was something missing, like there was an emptiness you couldn't fill." And each year has been punctuated with dates ensuring there was little respite from remembering.

The two little girls' birthdays were January 1st and 2nd, Anna's had been March 18th, her wedding had taken place on December 3rd.

"There was no forgetting it, though over the years it has become more a fact of life. You get on with it."

Her mother, Annie, died nine years after Anna's death, aged 53, and though her father, Paddy, "went on the drink for a few years", he lived long enough to see the Hamilton Inquiry get under way in 1999.

Alice says in the years after the bombings her family was "treated like shit".

"No one wanted to know. The politicians came to the funeral - Liam Cosgrave and that.

"But, after that, no one came near us, not even a policeman. There was an inquest opened and closed in a flash."

Since 1993 , when the British documentary Hidden Hand - the Forgotten Massacre was broadcast, the families have been campaigning for an inquiry into what happened and into what was known and by whom.

It was not until 1999, when the Government established the Hamilton Inquiry, that Alice began to feel she and other victims' families were acknowledged.

"It meant they knew we weren't going to go away until we got the truth. That's all we wanted."