On this day 1985: Michael Noonan backs RUC

On the 17 April 1985, then Fine Gael Justice Minister Michael Noonan outraged nationalists in the North when he heaped praise on the hated Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) at a Garda Representative Association meeting in Bundoran, County Donegal.

Speaking at the event, Noonan told the audience:

"We support them [the RUC] in their endeavours to bring law and order to a disturbed part of this country," to which he received a standing ovation from assembled gardaí.

Just days before Noonan's comments, Conor Murphy – now a Sinn Féin MP – had been arrested, interrogated and beaten by the RUC, leaving him with two black eyes.

During the interrogation two RUC men told him they would put a booby-trap bomb under his mother's car and that the next time he was stopped at an RUC checkpoint he would "disappear".

Reacting to Noonan's comments, An Phoblacht led with the headline "Gross insult" saying his praise was tantamount to "an official blessing by a senior minister" to the RUC's activities.

The front-page story noted the comments would "not escape the attention or the disgust of the tens of thousands of nationalists who have experienced RUC bigotry over sixty years of Orange rule, nor the families of those who died at the hands of those same upholders of 'law and order'".