I.R.A. ORGANISING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 135, 5 December 1944, Page 5

I.R.A. ORGANISING

THREAT TO DE VALERA

LONDON, December 3. Mr. de Valera is facing a new, determined bid in Eire to reorganise the outlawed Irish Republican Army, states the "Daily MaiL" Members of the I.R.A. recently obtained £15,000 sterling from the robbery of a post office and a British tobacco firm, both in Dublin. Eire Civil Guards, hunting the I.R.A. leaders, have already arrested 20 key men who were attempting to organise demonstrations in Dublin. " It is feared the movement has a secret arms dump and is also endeavouring to secure tommy-guns.

Members of the Eire Cabinet believe that the efforts to obtain a reprieve for Charles Kerins, who was sentenced to death for the murder of DetectiveSergeant Denis O'Brien, are a cloak for I.R.A. recruiting 'efforts. The police moved on people who knelt in the heart of Dublin to pray for Kerins. Police also broke up a demonstration in one Dublin street by a baton charge in which several people were injured. Mr. de Valera meanwhile has appealed to parents not to allow their children to join the I.R.A. He warned them that once they enrolled they would find it difficult to get out, because they would be threatened by guns. He recalled the releasing of a member of the I.R.A. who was near to death as a result of hunger-striking. The man recovered and killed six persons within a year.

•'I then learned a lesson which I am not forgetting as long as* I am the executive," said Mr. de Valera. "Let there be reprisals if there will, but while we are here we will carry out the law fairly and justly."