It's time the State said sorry to my murdered dad
Prison officer Brian Stack was shot in the back of the head in March 1983 as he walked from the National Boxing Stadium after the national senior finals and died 18 months later from his injuries.
Last Thursday, as I walked through my local shopping centre in Portlaoise, something unusual happened. I had gone to the shopping centre to sign copies of my new book, . As I was walking back through the main shopping area, a young man in a tracksuit approached me — he was probably no more than 20. As he reached me, he held out his hand and said “alright Mr Stack”.
Anybody who has ever worked in a prison will tell you this is the greeting prison officers usually get from ex-prisoners if you meet them outside the prison environment. So I wasn’t surprised when the young man told me he had served a few very short sentences.
He told me he had heard I was now retired from the prison service and he wanted to wish me well. In doing so, he told me while he knew I had to be tough on them sometimes, he appreciated I was always fair and treated the prisoners as human beings.
He then wished me well with my book and said he hoped I got justice for my dad, which I found strange, as he would have been born at least 20 years after my dad was murdered.
When I got home, I began to think about this encounter and what it meant — it showed me just how like my dad I was in the way I managed my relationships with prisoners and how I had subconsciously learned so much from him.
My dad was Brian Stack, chief officer in Portlaoise Prison at the height of the Troubles. This was not a good time to be head of security in what during those dark days was being described as Europe’s most secure prison.
The IRA campaign had spilled south of the border, and they had routinely murdered gardaí, robbed banks, kidnapped people, as well as horses. They were also very good at smuggling bomb-making Semtex and other weapons into the prison in their attempts to effect escapes.
My dad was very diligent and security focused and he also made sure those working with him equally kept their eye on the ball. However, even in this tense working atmosphere, he managed to treat prisoners as human beings, and many former prisoners who spoke to me during my time in the prison service explained how he did small things for them that meant a lot at the time.
My dad was also very much aware of how much the job was taking out of his colleagues and he tried to counter this by organising sports days, road races and quiz nights for the staff and their families.
These events, while being a release from the tough job they did, also created a sense of comradery and a bond among the staff, and it must be noted that during dad’s tenure as chief officer, the IRA did not manage or attempt an escape.
Not wanting an escape to happen on his watch, he would change locks on gates every month to make the keys the IRA had acquired redundant. This, coupled with the fact he had organised late-night searches for a gun that had been smuggled into the prison, meant the IRA needed to ensure my dad was no longer a problem for them, as they were planning a major escape.
On March 25, 1983, an IRA team shot my dad in the back of the head as he walked from the National Boxing Stadium after the national senior finals. His life was saved that night by doctors from Belfast who were attending the boxing, but he spent six months in a coma, and when he woke, he was severely brain damaged and was paralysed from the neck down.
He died 18 months later from his injuries. At the time, the IRA issued a statement denying responsibility, but in reality, they were the only ones with the motive and ability to carry out this attack.
The murder of a prison officer was a capital offence at the time, and it was a direct attack on the State. So you would expect the State’s response would be to leave no stone unturned in finding those responsible. Unfortunately, this is not what happened.
In 2007, I became aware that despite some good eyewitness evidence and material evidence being available from the crime scene, nothing had been done to bring this evidence into a useful resource for the investigation.
Despite a fresh investigation being ordered by the Garda Commissioner, I had no faith it would deliver results, and I was proved right when in January 2012 the gardaí declared to me they did not believe the IRA were responsible for the attack.
The rest of my family and I really felt badly let down by this declaration and it put us in a position where we had to find answers elsewhere. This led to my brother, Oliver, and I being put into a blacked-out van and driven up to the border to meet with the IRA, who gave us an admission that an IRA unit acting under orders but not sanction from the army council had carried out the attack that resulted in dad’s murder.
This immediately disproved the Garda viewpoint that the IRA had not been involved, and along with other serious errors through three separate investigations, this led to the family receiving a written apology from the Garda Commissioner in July 2019.
My dad was murdered by the IRA, but the State he was defending has let him down badly and has failed to recognise this. It says a lot about society when a young ex-prisoner who was born 20 years after the attack could show more concern for my dad’s case than an uncaring State.
The minister for justice should make a State apology to my dad — he deserves this and much more.
