Irish officials were told that an increase in haulage traffic across the border would provide opportunities for republican paramilitaries through the lapse of official customs controls.

The Irish Government raised concerns over claims made by a British Conservative minister that some lawyers in Northern Ireland were “unduly sympathetic to the IRA”, weeks before Pat Finucane was killed.

THE politics of whiskey production perplexed several government departments in 1979 and 1980, as they struggled for a legal definition of Irish Whiskey that would not heighten tensions over Northern Ireland.