May 17th, 1974, 6.45 p.m. The time and date of the Monaghan bomb are etched in Iris Boyd's memory.
Mrs Boyd, then aged 28, had spent the day shopping in the town with her 73-year-old father, Archibald Harper, a businessman from the nearby village of Rockcorry.
The two separated for a while and when Iris was returning to meet her father at his car she heard the bomb go off. "I ran to the area but the police stopped me going anywhere near my father's car because there was a suspected second bomb."
Her cousin, Norman Campbell, then approached her and told her that her dad had been taken to hospital by car. "It was a drizzly, damp evening and when we arrived at the hospital there was a funeral coming out and there was chaos.
"I was taken to the matron's office and told that my father was queueing for theatre. Shrapnel from the bomb had hit him in the head and he was unconscious. I didn't see him until late that night, it must have been 11 p.m. He was still unconscious after the operation.
"Everything is very vivid. My father survived, unconscious, for four days. He died on Tuesday, May 21st, at 11.45 p.m."
Even after 24 years, Mrs Boyd has to pause and check the tears as she recalls the event. "I'm usually able to talk about it," she says, surprised at her own reaction.
"My father was 73, but he was active, and the post-mortem confirmed that he was healthy." Mrs Boyd's mother, Lillie, is now 86. The tragedy was the second to hit the family that year, coming just months after the murder of Mrs Boyd's second cousin, Senator Billy Fox.
Two years after the bomb, which killed seven people, the Harpers' pub in Rockcorry was attacked with an incendiary device and Mrs Boyd and her family moved to Northern Ireland. She now lives in Lisburn, Co Antrim.
In the first years after his death, the loss of her father was too great to leave any room for concern about who might have been responsible. But now Mrs Boyd, like other relatives of the Dublin and Monaghan victims, needs to have the truth established.
"We felt at the time `even if they come and tell us, it's not going to bring back my dad'. But as the years have gone on I have wanted answers. Nobody has come forward to give me explanations. I've never been told who killed my dad.
"My mother is still alive and I would like my mother to know who was behind that bomb in Monaghan. Just answers, that's all."
