‘Sallins Inquiry Now’ Benefit

“Open Those Gates – 50 Years On: A Night of Truth, Justice and Solidarity”

Vicar Street, Dublin – Sunday, 29 March 2026 @ 8pm sharp.

 Line-Up Includes: 

Damien Dempsey

Kíla

John Spillane & Pauline Scanlon

Theo Dorgan, Paula Meehan & Colm Mac Con Iomaire

Gene Kerrigan, Peter Murtagh, Justine McCarthy, Patsy McGarry

Osgur Breatnach & Nicky Kelly 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfChxr9m3Ss

Half a century after one of Ireland’s darkest miscarriages of justice, artists, journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders will come together for a night of remembrance, resistance, and renewal.
“Open Those Gates – 50 Years On” marks fifty years since the Sallins Mail-Train Frame-Up Case, a moment that exposed the fault lines in Ireland’s justice system — and the long shadow of silence that followed.

A Case That Shook the Republic

In 1976, over 40 people were arrested in connection with the so-called Sallins Mail Train Robbery. Several were beaten, tortured, and forced to sign false confessions.
Three innocent men — Osgur Breatnach, Brian McNally, and Nicky Kelly — were convicted by the non-jury Special Criminal Court and sentenced to years of hard labour.
Despite overwhelming evidence of brutality and injustice, the State has never issued an apology, never held an inquiry, and never explained how three men were imprisoned on coerced statements alone.

Their story is Ireland’s own Birmingham Six — but unlike the UK, we have yet to face it.

Human Rights Lawyer Alastair Logan who acted in the cases of the ‘Guildford Four’ and ‘Maguire Seven’ become aware of the Sallins Mail-Train Frame-Up Case, a case he regarded of equal magnitude and importance.

“I was struck by similarities between how my Clients in the ‘Guildford Four’ and ‘Maguire Seven’ Cases - and of course ‘Birmingham Six’ - were stitched-up just like in the Sallins Case:- all were arrested in the mid 1970s, all were assaulted in police custody, some were forced to incriminate themselves for crimes they did not commit and all received lengthy prison sentences”.

Supreme Court Justice Adrian Hardiman warned in 2007 when comparing the Sallins Case to those English miscarriage of justice cases:

“We have never, as a country or as a community, internalized the lessons of that event.”

Because until Ireland faces its own ghosts — they will continue to haunt us.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin [American writer and civil rights activist].