Arms Crisis (Ireland)

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The arms crisis (eng. Arms Crisis ) was a political scandal in the Republic of Ireland , in which two government ministers of the Fianna Fáil were accused -party, weapons worth £ 100,000 for the IRA to have imported. The money was stolen from funds intended to aid Catholic civilians during the Northern Ireland conflict.

The Treasury Secretary Charles Haughey and the Agriculture Minister Neil Blaney were then dismissed from the government on May 6, 1970 by the Taoiseach Jack Lynch . Kevin Boland , the Irish Family Minister , resigned in protest of the layoffs.

The trial of the two former ministers took place in Dublin on May 28, 1970 . Involved continued to be a Secret Service officer of the Irish Army , Captain James Kelly, a Republican from Belfast named John Kelly and the Belgian arms dealer Albert Luykx. Blaney was acquitted on July 2 and the other four defendants on October 23.

The scandal led to violent clashes within Fianna Fáil between supporters of Haughey and Blaney on the one hand and those of Jack Lynch on the other - a point of contention that came up again in 1979 when Haughey became party leader. Some of Haughey's opponents, led by the excluded Fianna Fáil member Desmond O'Malley , founded the Progressive Democrats party in 1985 .