Fifty years ago, on 17 May 1974, my father, a bus conductor, was out on strike. That day, the Troubles arrived with a vengeance in my home town of Dublin. Three bombs exploded at different points in the city centre during rush hour. Because the buses were not operating, there were more people walking along those streets than usual. Twenty-three of them were killed and another three later succumbed to their injuries. Another bomb that exploded 90 minutes later in Monaghan, on the southern side of the border, killed seven people.

In 1984, when I was trying to write a piece for the 10th anniversary of the bombings, I called to the houses of some of the bereaved families. No one wanted to talk to me. They felt betrayed, abandoned, already forgotten. They had no trust in anyone. Marie Sherry, who was injured but survived, later described how, in the weeks and months after the massacre, she would ask her mother: “‘Mum, any news on those people who did the bombing? Was anybody charged?’ There never was news. There were no names. Nobody was charged. I lived my life thinking, ‘These guys are walking around. They could be sitting beside me in the cinema. They could be on the bus.’”

This torment continues to haunt tens of thousands of people who lost loved ones or who were themselves maimed in atrocities during the Troubles. Writing in 2021, Jon Boutcher, who is now chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, noted how anniversaries mark not just the moments of death, but the intolerable passage of years of unknowing: “Anniversaries of such awful events as the devastating attacks in Dublin and Monaghan will continue to be unbearably painful reminders of the distrust........

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