DUBLIN city centre was severely disrupted for more than six hours yesterday after a hoax bomb warning from loyalist paramilitaries led gardai to clear. O'Connell Street and the surrounding area.
A caller using a recognised code word telephoned the BBC in Belfast at 12.35 p.m. and said that the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) had planted a bomb in O'Connell Street.
Gardai began to clear the street at 12.45 p.m., using loud hailers to shepherd members of the public out of the area. The street half a kilometre in length was crowded with shoppers and tourists at the time and it was after 1p.m. before the entire area was cleared.
An Army Dauphin helicopter with a garda observer on board flew over the area for most of the afternoon.
During an extensive search of the area, the Garda authorities were advised of a further warning call saying that the bomb had been placed under cardboard and beside a building full of glass". This led gardai to focus on the junction of North Earl Street and O'Connell Street, where there was a skip full of rubbish, including cardboard.
At about 4 p.m., an Army bomb disposal team was called in and its robot began shifting through rubbish in the Skip. A shoe box was found under a piece of cardboard and the Army carried out a controlled explosion on it, but nothing suspicious was found inside.
When the Ulster Volunteer Force planted a bomb on the Dublin Belfast train in 1994, the device which failed to detonate was contained in a shoe box.
The all clear was given in O'Connell Street just before 7 p.m. and the public was allowed to return to the area.
In what appeared to be a separate, copycat" incident, a male caller rang the central telephone exchange shortly before 4 p.m. and warned of bombs at The Square shopping centre in Tallaght. Although the caller used no code words, the centre was cleared and checked before being reopened to the public at about 7 p.m.
The chief executive of the Dublin City Centre Business Association, Mr Tom Coffey, suggested that the Garda may have overreacted to the O'Connell Street bomb warning. He said that terrorists had three targets life, property and the economic viability to an area. While he agreed that the safety of life was paramount, he understood that the bomb warning had been limited to the O'Connell Street area and thus was knot happy that gardai advised people not to come into the city centre".
This would have the effect of damaging business and allowing terrorists to achieve their objective of economic disruption, he said, adding, "We'll be putting our views in writing to the Garda."
Mr Coffey said the cost of the day's disruption to businesses probably exceeded £1 million.
Garda Headquarters responded to Mr Coffey's remarks last night. This matter was treated extremely seriously in the light of the information that we had," said a garda. "The preservation of life is paramount in situations like this and gardai took the necessary steps to ensure that the public were protected."
More than 40 people in the Republic have died in attacks linked to loyalist paramilitaries over the last 26 years. The worst atrocity was the death of 33 people in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May, 1974.
During the 1990s, there have been a series of hoax bomb calls linked to loyalists and a number of fire bomb attacks.