Princess Grace warned away from northside

ORGANISERS of the 1973 visit by Princess Grace of Monaco to Ireland feared her stay in Dublin could be disrupted by bomb scares if her accommodation was on the city’s northside.

The princess came to Ireland in June at the invitation of Eoin McKiernan, president of the Irish American Cultural Institute, of which she was international chairwoman, and which was holding a board of directors meeting in Dublin on the 28th.

Conscious of the popularity of the princess in her ancestral homeland, Mr McKiernan wrote to inform the Department of Foreign Affairs of her visit and it quickly took on a diplomatic occasion, with Foreign Minister Garrett FitzGerald offering a luncheon in her honour and new President Erskine Childers laying on a dinner at Áras an Uachtaráin, even though he was only taking up residency there three days earlier.

The Honorary Consul of Monaco, Lord Killanin, was drafted in to take charge of the arrangements and he later confirmed he had provisionally booked the princess a suite with two bedrooms at the Shelbourne Hotel.

“Mr O’Sullivan of the Gresham (Hotel) has offered his suite,” he wrote, “but I could not advise the princess to stay north of the river owing to the inconvenience of bomb scares, besides the general security position.”

During her three-day visit, the princess was asked by press about her views on the security situation and she replied rather vaguely that she kept in touch with events as much as possible but felt people abroad were confused as to the true issues.

Commentators noted that her visit was a pale imitation of her holiday in Ireland 10 years earlier, when thousands turned out to greet the epitome of glamour wherever she went with her husband, Prince Rainier.

One press report said that on this occasion the princess, who was then 42, appeared travel-weary and “looked almost matronly in a putty coloured tweed two-piece”.