The Army’s bomb squad has detonated 180 sticks of explosives that were found on former RTÉ journalist and farmer, Fergal Keane’s Co. Cork farm this week.
Fergal Keane has said the discovery and detonation of explosives, which date back to the Irish War of Independence, on his farm was like watching “history come alive”.
The explosives were detonated in three controlled explosions yesterday (Thursday, October 5) on Keane’s 10ha farm in Baltimore, Co. Cork, by the state’s Defence Force’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal service.
The 180 sticks of gelignite explosives were discovered on Wednesday evening (October 4) by a man doing stonework on a shed that Keane was renovating.
Speaking on the discovery of the explosives, Keane said the whole experience was a source of great “excitement” for the area, and for himself and his family.
“I went down on Wednesday evening and we had a look at it on Thursday morning, and I recognised this straight away as being a commercial explosive that had been hidden there for quite a long time,” he said.
“I also knew that this stuff can get very unstable; liable to detonate on impact or something like that as it gets older. So we just left the place and left the area.
“I phoned the guards and they came over pretty quickly from Clonakilty because the station in Skibbereen isn’t fully manned anymore.”
Calling the bomb squad
As soon as Gardaí had arrived at Keane’s Lahern Farm, he said they immediately “called the bomb squad”, and the Explosive Ordnance Disposal service came from Co. Dublin.
“It was great excitement for a little area that they were there,” he said. “Then we had to leave the house.”
“They cordoned off all the roads around but didn’t ask people to leave their houses,” he added.
“There was a digger working on site, so they got him to dig a big hole and then they put this stuff in and had three very big controlled explosions and blew it all up.”
Keane said many people had been in touch with him, since he uploaded footage of the controlled explosions to social media, about the history of gelignite.
“Loads of people in contact with me. Gelignite was made in a factory called Curtis and Harvey in Kent in England. It’s on the label, and that place closed down in 1920.
“…it meant that all the stuff was seized or found, taken by the IRA, obviously, prior to 1920.”
Keane said the gardaí and the Explosive Ordnance Disposal service said that, after Soloheadbeg in 1919 – one of the first incidences and ambushes in the Irish War of Independence – the west Cork IRA seized “huge amounts of gelignite, most of which has never been found”.
“They were speculating yesterday, the gardaí and the army, that this could be some of that.,” he said.
‘We thought we’d find something…but nothing like this’
Keane said Lahern Farm had belonged to the same family for generations, and had then been uninhabited for a while, so he always had a feeling he would find something interesting on the land or in its outbuildings.
However, he said, he never expected to find anything like the stash of gelignite found in the shed.
“The army left yesterday evening and they said the immediate area is safe, but if [I am] doing other work on other buildings to proceed carefully as [I] might find more.
“We always thought we would find stuff hidden there because it had never been sold and it was always in the one family until we bought.
“And with the family history with the west Cork, right away we thought we’d always find something, but we thought it might be a gun or something like that, nothing like this.”