The British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, has agreed to the transfer of another seven IRA prisoners to serve the remainder of their sentences in Portlaoise Prison. The move follows Government amendments to legislation last month to ensure that prisoners transferred to the Republic serve out the tariff imposed by the country in which they were sentenced.
The men include five members of a bomb gang sent to London by the IRA after its ceasefire ended in 1996. Two of these, Gerard Hanratty and John Crawley, are believed to be leading IRA figures.
Crawley is a former US marine captured along with Kerry Sinn Fein man Mr Martin Ferris on board the Marita Ann trawler which was being used to land 7 1/2 tonnes of weapons in 1984.
Crawley, who served 11 years in Portlaoise, is believed to have returned to active service with the IRA immediately after his release. Hanratty (39), from Belfast, was arrested in 1990 on the Dutch-German border along with another IRA man after two rifles and three revolvers were found in their car.
He was part of an IRA gang that conducted a series of attacks on British military targets on the Continent in the late 1980s. About 12 people, including a six-month-old baby girl, a German woman and two Australian tourists, were killed by the IRA during this period. Hanratty served a prison sentence in Holland and is also believed to have returned to active service with the IRA on his release.
Hanratty, who had been living in north inner Dublin, Crawley, Robert Morrow (38), of Wolfe Tone Terrace, Dundalk; Francis Rafferty (45), from west Belfast but living in Dublin; and Donal Gannon (34), St Joseph's Place, north Dublin, were all sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment in July for conspiring to cause explosions. They are not due for release until 2019.
The other two men are Liam O Dhuibhir and Peter Sherry. O Dhuibhir was arrested with another IRA man, Damien McComb, as they went to collect explosives from a dump hidden at the caves at Newgale, Pembrokeshire.
A police surveillance operation was placed on the dump after it was uncovered during a search for an elderly couple who were shot dead, almost certainly by IRA members. It is believed the couple came across IRA members at the hideout and were shot dead and thrown from the cliffs.
O Dhuibhir (35) had been an active IRA member in Dublin for years. In 1984 he was sentenced to five years for kidnapping a Dublin criminal figure.
At his Old Bailey trial in December 1990, the court heard that bomb parts from the Pembrokeshire dump had been used in the attack on the Royal Marine music school in Deal, Kent, where 11 bandsmen were killed in 1990.
Sherry (42), from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, was one of the bomb gang which carried out a series of attacks in England culminating in the attack on the Conservative Party conference in Brighton in October 1984.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1986 along with three other IRA members for conspiring to bomb British holiday resorts and for possessing explosives.
The seven men will join eight IRA men who have already been moved from British prisons to Portlaoise. Another of the IRA prisoners transferred from England, Patrick Kelly, died from cancer in June.