Clonaslee people say area is not a hotbed of IRA activity

ONE OF three teenage boys cycling up the mountain road near where the search was taking place was enjoying the village's temporary notoriety. "At last, something exciting happening in Clonaslee," he said. "It's usually just boring."

Most people knew the residents of the farmhouse, but the news of the "bomb factory" had left them "shocked, totally shocked".

One of his friends said he had been in school with the youngest of the three men arrested at the farm. The man had stayed back a few years and was older than anyone else in the class. Nobody knew him well as he was "quiet".

In the village, an elderly man rejected the notion that the area was an IRA hotbed. "It was a bit of a hotbed during the 195Os, when the mountains were a training ground. Sean South and all those fellows would have all been up there. But not now. They wouldn't have much support at all."

In Fallon's pub, where one of the men arrested was known to drink, the young barman said there was no sympathy in the community for them: "Not from me, anyway.

An old man at the bar interrupted a comment from his wife to say: "We're strangers here, we don't know anything," before adding "They're friggers, anyway, all the trouble they brought around Clonaslee."

A teenage girl, who like everybody else approached preferred not to be named, said the IRA had no support in the area. "Absolutely not. There might be one or two, but most people are very much against. Nobody I know supports them."

One of the men arrested at the house had been "a bit of a handyman", she said. "He was supposed to be fixing my friend's video. She'll probably never get it back now.