On Sunday 29th of March, in Vicar St., Dublin’s premier music venue, a gathering of renowned musicians, poets, writers, lawyers and human rights defenders will take to the stage in support of one of the longest-running miscarriage of justice cases in Ireland’s modern history.
Billed as the ‘Sallins Inquiry Now!’ Benefit and under the title of ‘Open Those Gates – 50 Years On: A Night of Truth, Justice and Solidarity’, the event is part of the ongoing international campaign to establish an independent sworn public inquiry into matters relating to those arrested in connection with the infamous Sallins Mail Train Robbery, which took place in Co. Kildare, on the train line between Cork and Dublin, in the early hours of the 31st of March 1976.
The event has been organised by the renowned Irish traditional whistle player Cormac Breatnach and appearing on stage will be musical acts including Kíla, Damien Dempsey, John Spillane & Pauline Scanlon, and Colm Mac Con Iomaire. These will be joined by poets Theo Dorgan and Paula Meehan, and authors, writers and journalists Gene Kerrigan, Peter Murtagh, Justine McCarthy and Patsy McGarry.
The concert seeks to bring squarely back to the general public’s attention the call for the Irish State to offer an unequivocal apology for the unlawful arrest, detention, brutalisation and torture of a number of members of the legally constituted Irish Republican Socialist Party / Páirtí Poblachtach Sóisialach na hÉireann (IRSP). The night additionally hopes to raise sufficient funds to continue the fight for a formal inquiry into the unjust activities of the State’s agents at that time. These miscarriages of justice relate to living and deceased IRSP members – particularly to Osgur Breatnach (born 1950), Edward Noel ‘Nicky’ Kelly (born 1951) and Bernard McNally (born 1952), all of whom were then in their early twenties and who are now in their mid-seventies.
Formed as a breakaway political entity from the Workers’ Party (otherwise identified as Official Sinn Féin), the IRSP was established at a meeting in the Spa Hotel in Lucan on the 8th of December 1974. Later that evening, at a separate meeting in the hotel, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) was brought into being as the paramilitary wing of the IRSP. However, none of the accused were ever members of the INLA. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), an entirely separate organisation, on two separate occasions, in 1980 and 1983, admitted responsibility for the armed robbery.
Depending on whichever contemporary sensationalist media report was to be believed, the train robbers stole between £200,000 and one million Irish pounds, monies that were being sent to Dublin banks from various branches in the south of the country. The cash was never recovered but within a week media reports appeared stating that 19 members of the IRSP had been brought in for questioning by the Gardaí under the provisions of the notorious Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act of 1972. Those detained included the party’s leader, Seamus Costello, Jim Doherty, a member of the party’s executive, and Osgur Breatnach, previously the P.R.O. for the Markievicz Cumann of Sinn Féin but by then the editor of the IRSP’s newspaper ‘The Starry Plough’.
A few days after the robbery, the Belfast Telegraph ran the story that five IRSP members were being charged in connection with the crime, naming them as Bernard McNally (aged 33), John Fitzpatrick (24), Edward Noel Kelly (25), Oliver Michael Plunkett (24) and Osgur Breratnach (24). Even at this very early stage in the coverage of the robbery, it was reported that Breatnach had been transferred from Dublin’s Bridewell Garda Station to the Richmond Hospital for treatment for concussion and other injuries.
The troubling words of the Belfast Telegraph’s article, of Thursday 8th April 1976, reported that “Dr. Noel Smith told the court he examined Mr. Breatnach yesterday in a room in the Four Courts. He said he found him to be suffering from headaches, loss of memory, pains in the back of his head and neck, and concussion.” Dr. Smith also observed that “He had a large swelling on his head and bruising on his arms and buttocks and legs. Dr. Smith added that all of these injuries were on the back part of the body and were not consistent with falling backwards.”
Additional to the above, the newspaper recorded that “Mr. Breatnach’s solicitor, Mr. Dudley Potter, told the court that his client told him that he had been under interrogation since last Monday. At 5.30 yesterday morning he was taken to a tunnel linking the Bridewell with the District Courts. His leather jacket was taken off and he was beaten by two or three members of the Gardaí. Mr. Breatnach then told him he was taken back to the room and beaten and punched. It was made clear to him that this would continue unless he made a statement. Mr. Breatnach subsequently made a statement implicating himself in the commission of a criminal offence.”
The Sallins Train Robbery case opened in the three-judge non-jury Special Criminal Court (which also had been set up in 1972), on the 19th January 1978. By April of that year it had become the longest running trial in Irish legal history. At the conclusion of the case, those convicted of the crime were sentenced to periods of up to twelve years in prison. However, controversy plagued the court case, especially when it was observed by the defence lawyers that justice was not being served, as one of the court’s members, Judge William O’Connor, was continually falling asleep during the hearings. The case was further placed in jeopardy when the same judge died of a heart attack at his home two months later.
In October 1978, Michael Plunkett was acquitted on the presentation of evidence of mistaken identity and in May 1980 both Bernard McNally’s and Osgur Breatnach’s convictions were quashed. On appeal, however, it took another four years before Nicky Kelly was released after undergoing a hunger strike to protest his innocence. In 1992, he received a Presidential Pardon removing any charges against him.
In the end, all of the Sallins Robbery convictions were overturned after it was determined that the victim’s statements of guilt had been unlawfully obtained after they were assaulted while in custody. During the intervening 50 years since the train robbery took place, subsequent attempts have been made to achieve justice for the men whose constitutional rights were so clearly infringed from 1978 onwards.
Following a crime that happened half a century ago, two generations have since grown up. For many busily going about their lives in 2026, the events of 1976 might seem to be, at worst, an irrelevance and, at best, of only mild historical interest. That this Sallins Inquiry Now! benefit concert is being held at all should, however, lead to the even better outcome that young minds would learn as a cautionary lesson the fact that justice was not and is still not being served in the Sallins’ case. And this despite the fact that in many other miscarriage of justice cases over the years the State has admitted they were wrongfully handled and for which injustices, apart from this one, they have since apologised.
The 1937 Irish Constitution holds that justice should be administered through independent courts in a manner that ensures fairness and equality for all of its citizens “without fear or favour”. It also requires that, by way of due process, State power is exercised within constitutional bounds. Article 40.3.2, in particular, enshrines the principle that “the State shall, in particular, by its laws protect as best it may from unjust attack and, in the case of injustice done, vindicate the life, person, good name, and property rights of every citizen.”
Of his life-long effort to achieve justice for his brother Osgur, Cormac Breatnach has commented: “The Benefit Concert is about raising awareness and meeting the costs of putting it on; any profits made will go towards funding the ongoing Sallins Inquiry Now! campaign. My own role in all of this has been supportive, hence my decision to raise awareness again with this 50th anniversary event. For me it is about honouring memory (the impact the case had on me, my family and those of the other victims), seeking justice (which still needs to be achieved), and acknowledging the enduring powerful role that artists and activists to date have played in highlighting the injustices of this case.”
He goes on to state: “Miscarriages of justice affect the accused, their families and the wider society. The Irish Government is duty-bound under international law to set up an Inquiry and I can refer you to the 2023 Irish Council of Civil Liberties Petition in this regard. Whether they will do this remains to be seen, but until it does, and until we learn about what really went on, our criminal justice system and police force will forever remain ‘in the dock’.”
Although evidence can be lost, memories can fade, and witnesses, victims and the perpetrators of injustices can die, there should be no Statute of Limitations on a genuine and objective search for the truth, especially when past activities are subject to the old cop-out phrase that “that was the way we did things then”.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the various political ideologies that make up the spectrum of choices that Irish society enjoys, State-condoned violence should never be tolerated as a means to control those with whom one does not agree. Sadly, we are now living at a time of a rapidly changing world order, where coercive State power is once again threatening to overwhelm the national and international rule of law.
Ireland will hold the Presidency of the European Union from July to December of this year. During these unsettling times, it should not be beyond the wit and ability of our democratically elected representatives and the current coalition Government and its Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan to commit to holding an inquiry where every past Minister for Justice has refused to so do. He should also set a positive example in the name of justice and honour the promises of our Constitution by vindicating, by way of a full and official apology, the life, person and good name of Osgur Breatnach, Bernard McNally and Nicky Kelly while they are still alive, and to do the same posthumously for those wrongfully accused men who have since passed away.
Words: Kieran Owens
Further details of the issues referred to in this article, and of the ‘Sallins Inquiry Now!’ Benefit concert at Vicar St. on Sunday 29th March 2026, and can be found at:
www.osgurbreatnach.com/sallins-inquiry-now
www.greystonesguide.ie/slow-justice-coming-for-the-sallins-three
Tickets for the concert can be purchased at Ticketmaster:
https://www.ticketmaster.ie/sallins-inquiry-now-benefit-dublin-29-03-2026/event/18006363B06BCF8E
