‘I had a hand in most of them’: Irish ex-priest admits role in IRA bombings, including Brighton attack on Thatcher

Patrick Ryan, now 90, also admits he bought arms for IRA from Libyan dictator Gaddafi

Patrick Ryan admits his role in IRA bombings while speaking to the BBC's Spotlight documentary team (BBC NI Spotlight)

A former priest has admitted helping the IRA carry out bombings – including the lethal Brighton attack which nearly killed Margaret Thatcher in 1984.

Patrick Ryan, from Tipperary, has confessed in a BBC documentary to procuring explosives, timers and other weapons, including from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

He had previously denied accusations he was involved with the IRA at all, but in an interview said Mrs Thatcher had been “100 per cent” right to connect him to terrorist attacks, including the Brighton bombing.

“One way or another I had a hand in most of them,” Mr Ryan said, referring to IRA bombings in the 1980s. “Yes, she was right.”

The 90-year-old, who has never been convicted of any terrorist offences, also said his only regrets from the period were that he could not help the IRA carry out more deadly attacks.

“Oh I have, yes, big regrets. I regret that I wasn’t even more effective. I would like to have been much more effective than I actually was," he said.

“But we didn’t do too badly, no.”

The Brighton hotel bombing, which aimed to wipe out the entire British government during the 1984 Conservative Party conference, killed five people and injured 31 others.

Mrs Thatcher and many other senior ministers only narrowly escaped unscathed.

Among the other attacks Mr Ryan now admits he played a role in were the Hyde Park and Regent’s Park bombings, a double attack in 1982 which killed 11 soldiers and injured 51 others.

In the BBC documentary the former priest, who left the Catholic Church in the 1970s, explained how he helped concoct a new kind of timed bomb which would stop IRA members accidentally blowing themselves up while planting their devices.

While travelling in Europe he spotted the Memopark device, which was used to remind drivers when their parking tickets would expire. He bought hundreds of them and sent them to the IRA to use as a more effective timing device.

A Memopark timer was found in the rubble of the Brighton hotel bombed in 1984.

He was also a key conduit between the IRA and Gaddafi, who was happy to help arm the terrorists who were battling their mutual enemy, Britain.

“He was a fine fella. One of the best I ever met,” Mr Ryan said of the murderous autocrat, who was overthrown and killed in 2011. “We got on very well.”

The damaged Brighton hotel where Mrs Thatcher and the cabinet were staying after it was hit by the 1984 IRA bomb (PA)

Mr Ryan had initially served as a Catholic missionary in Africa but by the time the Troubles started in the late 1960s he had become a parish priest back in Ireland.

He began giving money to the Provisional IRA, some of which was taken from the cash donated by his congregation to the church, and later quit the ministry to travel the world raising funds and buying arms for the group.

In 1988 he was caught in Belgium in a house with bomb-making equipment and cash and was the centre of a furious extradition battle between the UK and Ireland.

In the end, the Belgian authorities decided to send him back to Ireland, which then refused a request to extradite him to Britain on grounds he had already been called a terrorist in parliament, and would not receive a fair trial.

Some Unionists have now demanded he be prosecuted for his admissions.

Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim McAllister told BBC Radio Ulster Mr Ryan if it was right to investigate British soldiers over alleged misconduct during the Troubles, the former priest should also be pursued to the full extent of the law.