ANTI siege experts from the Northern Ireland Prison Service were brought to Dublin to assist in any attempt to storm the Separation Unit in Mountjoy Prison during the hostage crisis, it has been learned.
The two men had thermal lances which would have been used to cut through the steel door into the top security unit if any of the hostages had been injured. The plan was then to send in a unit of prison officers, wearing body armour and carrying batons, to relieve the siege.
This plan, it appears, was chosen in favour of using the Army Ranger Wing (ARW), the unit specifically trained in anti siege techniques. Three units of the ARW were on stand by outside the prison.
On the first day of the siege, two ARW officers examined the steel door to the Separation Unit and satisfied themselves they could blow it off its hinges and storm the unit in only a few seconds. However, the ARW unit which would have stormed the Separation Unit would have entered only if armed with automatic handguns.
Sources close to the ARW insist that their method would have had a much greater chance of freeing the four hostages without injury, although the hostage takers would almost certainly have suffered severe casualties.
In the event, the Mountjoy management successfully negotiated with the hostage takers, six unpredictable and dangerous inmates.
The prison governor, Mr John Lonergan, has confirmed that the crisis deepened after the Irish Independent reported that the ARW had been brought to the scene and had assessed the best method of storming the unit.
The authorities refused demands by the hostage takers to see both the Irish Independent and its sister paper, the Evening Herald, because this would have precipitated a more serious situation and endangered the hostages' lives.
"They would have stacked the hostages up against that door like firewood if they had read that story," one prison source said.
The inmates threatened to hang their hostages or stab them with a blood filled syringe on several occasions on Monday because of the decision to withhold the newspapers.
Eventually, it was learned that the hostage takers were more concerned that they were being further maligned in the media. After a 45 minute telephone conversation between the governor and two of the hostage takers, it was agreed to end the siege peacefully.
The siege was the first and most serious prison hostage situation experienced in the State. The prison authorities had been preparing for such an eventuality for more than two years and personnel had visited Scottish and Northern Ireland prison staff who have had such experiences in the past.
One of the factors in seeking a negotiated and peaceful settlement is the bearing this outcome would have on future hostage sieges. If the outcome of this siege had been fatal for the hostagetakers, this might have motivated another such group to adopt an even more violent approach.