In Short

A round-up of other 1979 news in brief

Mink coat stolen from Embassy

A mink coat, blankets and three bottles of brandy were among items stolen from the Irish Embassy in Delhi, India in January 1979. The break-in at the official residence took place while ambassador Francis Coffey and his wife were in Bombay.

The thieves broke into the wine storeroom and opened some bottles, but “surprisingly the only spirits taken were three or four bottles of Remy Martin and one or two bottles of liqueur”, a letter from Mr Coffey to the Department of Foreign Affairs notes. The ambassador’s wife owned the dark brown, full-length mink coat and the lamb coat that were stolen. “As far as can be determined the only State-owned items missing are a bedspread, an Indian-made blanket and a yellow Irish blanket,” the letter stated.

The Embassy placed an advert in the Hindustan Timesfor information offering a "suitable reward".

Memo sent over alcoholic claim

A Department of Health memo was sent to Irish diplomats in the US in an attempt to dispel a report in American newspapers that one in every 60 Irish persons was an alcoholic.

A doctor had given a lecture in Ireland claiming there were at least 50,000 alcoholics in the State, according to files from the Irish Embassy in Chicago in 1963. However, this figure was “little more than a guess” as there had never been a survey of alcoholism in Ireland, the letter said.There were over 700 alcohol addicts received in psychiatric hospitals in 1961, which showed that “the number of alcoholics who need hospitalisation is not a serious problem”. There was no justification for suggestions that alcoholism was an exceptional problem in this country, it said.

It was a recurring issue at the time, as enclosed with the memo was a 1960 speech by taoiseach Seán Lemass about the myth of Irish drinkers being “one of the most irritating and persistent falsehoods”. He said it was fostered by the British as a defence against Irish independence and was sustained by Irish writers to make money.

Serbian hijacker lands at Shannon

A Serbian revolutionary landed a hijacked passenger aircraft at Shannon because he thought he would be safe due to the absence of an extradition treaty with the US, according to a briefing document in the taoiseach’s files.

However, this was “an illusion” because Ireland could use international conventions, it states. The hijack by Nikola Kavaja began on a flight from New York to Chicago. After letting off the passengers, he flew to New York and then to Ireland with his lawyer and a pilot.

Hundreds of gardaí and soldiers waited for the aircraft at Shannon airport on June 21st. It was believed Kavaja had dynamite. The aircraft was shadowed by a US military craft the whole way, the file reveals.

He surrendered in Ireland, but was refused entry and held at Shannon Garda station overnight. Irish authorities wanted to return him on the American Airlines craft he came on, but the airline was reluctant to agree to this, a note to the Irish Embassy in the US states.

Kavaja was later convicted in the US for hijacking the craft to kill president Tito of Yugoslavia by loading it with fuel and crashing into communist party headquarters in Belgrade.

Belfast transport service praised

Belfast had a better transport system than Dublin because the “buses have been largely bombed out and private market has taken over”, a senior civil servant wrote in a note to taoiseach Jack Lynch on the proposed Dublin suburban rail line. The note said one objection to the line was that it would “preserve forever CIÉ’s stranglehold on public transport in Dublin”. A 1978 memo for Cabinet refers to Dublin’s traffic congestion and a petrol shortage, which was predicted over the next decade. It would make no sense to “waste millions of pounds’ worth of petrol idling in traffic jams” and the electrification process must proceed, the civil servant wrote.

On May 30th, 1979, the government announced that the electrified rail line from Howth to Bray would go ahead.