Reports in the domestic media that a 50lb bomb found in Dublin at the weekend was to be used to target the Giro d'Italia stage into the city have been repeated in the cycling press across the world.
Just 24 hours after big time cycling came back to Dublin after a wait of 18 years, news reports have emerged at home and internationally linking the discovery of a bomb in the city with a possible planned attack on the Giro d’Italia finale.
The reports linking the discovery of the large 50lb bomb to the Giro’s stage 3 finish in Dublin yesterday originated in today’s Irish Independent.
It ran a front page report under the headline: “Huge bomb found as Giro party hits town”.
However, while the headline seeks to link the device and the race, the story that follows is not as clear in that regard.
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It quotes unidentified Garda sources saying the intended target of those behind the bomb was “unclear”.
Later in the story it says the same sources were unable to rule out a link between the bomb and the race, with this line apparently the basis of the front page headline.
Other media outlets, including the State broadcaster RTE, reported the fact a bomb had been found but made no link or even reference to the Giro. The location where the bomb was found is around 16km from the closest part of the Giro route.
Any plan to explode a bomb in the Republic or even to use one to cause disruption would be highly unusual, indeed unprecedented, for dissident republican terrorists.
They have always targeted the security services in Northern Ireland because they are regarded by dissident republicans as forces of British occupation. While bombs have been found in the Republic in recent years, it has always been believed they were destined for use in the North.
Today's report, which appears to have been repeated internationally without questioning it, suggests the bomb had been transported in recent days from Belfast to Dublin and was about to be moved to its target location when intercepted during a Garda operation in a hotel car part in Lucan, Co Dublin, on Saturday evening.
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The upmarket Finnstown Country House Hotel was evacuated when the device was found in a vehicle in its car park and the Army bomb disposal unit was called in to examine it. The device was a fertiliser bomb contained in a milk churn which, according to reports, was ready to be exploded, with a time unit attached.
The hotel remained evacuated for most of the night into Sunday morning as the major Garda and Army operation unfolded before the bomb was taken away and made safe.
A man in his 50s was arrested in a follow-up search at a flat in west Dublin.
A number of large international cycling websites have taken up the story, speculating the bomb was about to be used to target the Giro. The reports are prominently placed in the Giro coverage across cycling sites given today is a rest day on the race with no action to report on.
Some of those sites are among the biggest sources of cycling news in the world and are based in the UK, Australia and US, though servicing a global audience.
Mainstream newspapers in Europe and as far away as Australia have also run the story, in what could prove to be a very damaging episode following a hugely positive visit by the Giro which was so well received by the public and media everywhere it went in Ireland.
The reports are in stark contrast to the feel good factor that emerged over the weekend on the occasion of three days of Giro racing in Belfast and Dublin, with massive crowds in the Republic yesterday though the race was only in the south for a couple of hours.
The Garda has confirmed a viable bomb was found in a Lucan hotel car park, apparently following a tip off at around 8.40pm on Saturday. But it has not disclosed any information on possible targets for the device.
Marcel Kittel in the points jersey just about edges out Team Sky’s Ben Swift for his second stage win in as many days on Giro d’Italia stage 3 into Dublin yesterday. Crowds packed the streets for the first visit of big time cycling to Ireland since the 1998 Tour de France (Photo: Toby Watson)
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