Today it would seem unthinkable but in the early 70s IRA prisoners broke out of jail not once but twice! A new coalition government came into power in early 1973, with a Fine Gael, law and order Taoiseach – Liam Cosgrave promising to take a no-nonsense approach to subversives. But on 31st October 1973 he was in for a shock. Three IRA men succeeded in pulling off a dramatic helicopter escape from Mountjoy Jail. At 3.30pm in afternoon, to the astonishment of prison officers, and the cheers of other prisoners, a helicopter scooped up three high-ranking members of the IRA: Seamus Twomey, J.B O’Hagan and Kevin Mallon, in the middle of a football game taking place in the prison yard. The chopper lifted off with the fugitives to the farcical shouts of prison guards attempting to foil the escape by shouting for the gates to be shut! The embarrassed Cosgrave Government reacted to the fiasco, ordering nationwide searches and the transfer of remaining republican prisoners from Mountjoy and the Curragh to Portlaoise prison After weeks on the run – Kevin Mallon was the first of the escapees recaptured at a GAA Dance in the Montague Hotel in Co. Laois. A republican comrade, Marion Coyle, was charged with attempting to shoot Gardaí arresting Mallon, but she was acquitted due to lack of identification. The government were to be even further embarrassed in January 1974 when a close associate of Mallon’s, Eddie Gallagher, along with Dr. Rose Dugdale hijacked another helicopter in Donegal to bomb the RUC station in Strabane from the air. The milk-churn bombs never exploded. Dugdale got away and went on to take part in the theft of the Beit paintings from Russborough House in Wicklow after which she was arrested and jailed. Gallagher too was subsequently jailed but not for long as, within 10 months of the Mountjoy escape in August 1974, 19 Republican prisoners blasted their way out of Portlaoise prison using old fashioned gelignite. Two of the 19 escapees were K