Slow Justice Coming For The Sallins Three

Cormac Breatnach THURS23OCT25

ack in the 1970s and even into the ’80s, the general consensus within the English justice system seemed to be that you were innocent until proven Irish.

Not that Ireland was immune to its own miscarriages of justice, of course.

Especially when the Garda’s so-called Heavy Gang were on the loose.

In a case that has been compared to those of The Birmingham Six and The Guildford Four, three men were jailed for the Sallins mail train robbery that took place on March 31st, 1976, a battered and very bruised Osgur Breatnach, Brian McNally and Nicky Kelly spending years in jail before their convictions were finally quashed.

The IRA claimed responsibility for the £200,000 robbery in May 1980, the same month that Breatnach and McNally were acquitted. Recognising which way the wind was blowing, Kelly had fled before the 1976 trial had concluded, returning from the USA in June 1980 expecting to be acquitted but instead spending another four years in jail proclaiming his innocence.

That they were so clearly battered and so clearly bruised when they signed alleged confessions is at the core of an ongoing campaign to establish a statutory inquiry into what is viewed by many as the most significant miscarriage of justice in modern Irish history.

An apology from the State wouldn’t go amiss either.

Marking almost 50 years to the day that his brother along with McNally and Kelly were jailed for a crime that they so clearly didn’t commit, musician Cormac Breatnach – who moved here with wife Ger in 2019 – has put together a night at Vicar Street on Sunday, March 29th entitled Open Those Gates – 50 Years On: A Night of Truth, Justice and Solidarity. And he’s got the top-of-the-range video promo to prove it.

The fundraiser will feature musicians such as Damien Dempsey, Kila, John Spillane and Pauline Scanlon, poets Theo Dorgan, Paula Meehan and Colm Mac Con Iomaire alongside journalists Gene Kerrigan, Justine McCarthy, Patsy McGarry, late addition Christy Moore, and our own Peter Murtagh.

Osgur Breatnach, Nicky Kelly and Brian McNally 1993

Not to mention very special guests Osgur Breatnach and Nicky Kelly. McNally is currently in a nursing home.

That one of those comparing the Sallins miscarriage of justice to those of The Birmingham Six and The Guildford Four is the Human Rights lawyer, Alastair Logan, who worked on The Guildford Four and The Maguire Seven cases, speaks volumes, whilst the late Supreme Court Justice Adrian Hardiman stated in 2007 that “we have never, as a country or a community, internalised the lessons of that event”.

Going live next week, you can grab your tickets for the all-star Open The Gates fundraising gig at Vicar Street on Sunday, March 29th right here. You can find out more here.

In the meantime, we caught up with Cormac – who has recorded on more than 50 albums but, most importantly, provided the whistle on the Glenroe theme – to talk justice, jails and daylight jobbery…

You can find out more about the Sallins case here, here, here, here and here. Those Vicar Street tickets are here, and there’s more on Cormac Breatnach here. You can also catch Cormac and Osgur on Sunday With Miriam O’Callaghan on Feb 1st 2026 here.