Govt housing cash may have bought I.R.A. arms

Press, 8 May 1978, Page 8

Govt housing cash may have bought I.R.A. arms

NZPA-Reuter Belfast A Government inquiry is trying to find out whether millions of dollars earmarked for rebuilding Northern Ireland’s shattered cities have instead been used by Irish Republican Army guerrillas to buy guns.

Some Northern Ireland politicians allege that as much as SNZ27M has been syphoned off to the Provisional I.R.A.

The money is claimed to have bought arms, ammunition, nd explosives on the international market to aid the I.R.A.’s attempts to end Britain’s control of Northern Ireland.

The public inquiry, begun

last week in an attempt to find out whether the claims are accurate, has already run into trouble.

Many people have refused to give evidence because they fear they could end up on an I.R.A. murder list. The Provisional I.R.A. declines all comment on the allegations, which have been raised in the British Parliament.

The situation stems from when thousands of Roman Catholics left their F -s in Belfast and moved to a separate sector of the city away from Protestants. That was in 1969, the start of the p esent sectarian violence, and 2000 munici-pally-owned houses and flats

me now lying derelL in Belfast. Protestants refuse to move into the empty accommodation, and the Roman Catholics will not leave their overcrowded area and return.

The homes stand empty and bricked up in the northc n Protestant area of Belfast while a few miles away in Roman Catholic west Belfast 1600 people are on the waiting list for houses.

A similar situation exists in other Norther® Ireland cities on a smaller scale. The British Government pumped millions of dollars into schemes to rer.ovate the houses and make them attractive to live in.