The Arms Crisis was a political scandal in the Republic of Ireland in 1970 in which Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney were dismissed as cabinet ministers for alleged involvement in a conspiracy to smuggle arms to the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. At the ensuing Arms Trial, charges against Blaney were dropped, and Haughey, along with co-defendants Captain James Kelly, John Kelly and Belgian businessman Albert Luykx, were found not guilty of conspiracy. Blaney claimed that the then government knew about the plan, while Haughey denied this.
Background
The events occurred during the Fianna Fáil government of Jack Lynch. Amid the 1969 Northern Ireland riots, which would lead to the Troubles, nationalist families were being forced from their homes, and refugees "streamed over the border" into the Republic. The Dublin government established a cabinet subcommittee to organise emergency assistance and relief. Haughey, then Minister for Finance and the hardline Blaney, Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries who was from the Donegal North-East constituency bordering Northern Ireland were members of the subcommittee, along with Pádraig Faulkner and Joseph Brennan. Jack Lynch took little interest in the work of the subcommittee, and after an initial meeting, Faulkner and Brennan seem to have left their senior colleagues Haughey and Blaney to their own devices. A government fund of £100,000 was set up to provide relief to civilians forced out of their homes by the Troubles, and Haughey was given sole authority over this money.
Haughey and Blaney disapproved of the cautious policies of Taoiseach Lynch on Northern Ireland and favoured a more robust approach. In August 1969, after Blaney had proposed military intervention in Northern Ireland, Lynch had asked Irish Army Intelligence to draft proposals for limited military intervention in Northern Ireland to protect nationalist areas from Ulster loyalist mobs, known as Exercise Armageddon, but it was seen to be unworkable and was not adopted by the cabinet. The nationalist areas were given a form of protection later in August by British forces in Operation Banner, and Lynch saw this as an effective short-term measure. On 30 October 1968, Lynch had met with Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in London and had called on Britain to take steps to end the partition of Ireland.
Blaney, the then Minister of Agriculture, was an outspoken critic of government policy on Northern Ireland. In a speech in 1969 he said "the Fianna Fail party has never taken a decision to rule out the use of force if the situation in the Six Counties so demand". Haughey had not publicly opposed Lynch's policy, but was concerned about being outflanked by his Fianna Fail leadership rival.
In October 1969, a meeting of the Northern Citizen Defence Committees, which had been set up to defend nationalist areas from unionist attack, and which included IRA officers, was held in Bailieborough, County Cavan, with Irish Army intelligence officer Captain James Kelly in attendance. Captain Kelly promised the Northern Citizen Defence Committees £50,000, that would be made available to buy weapons for defense of nationalist areas against loyalist attack.
After the Bailiebourough meeting, Kelly reported directly to Blaney, who in turn brought him to Haugheys's house to give account of the meeting. Kelly suggested that the government should support the IRA, acknowledging "this would mean accepting the possibility of armed action of some sort as the ultimate solution".
Blaney allegedly made plans with Captain Kelly to import weapons from continental Europe. Haughey provided the money for the purchase from his civilian relief fund, and also made a failed attempt to arrange customs clearance for the shipment.
Haughey met with the IRA Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding. Garda Special Branch informed the Minister for Justice Mícheál Ó Móráin of this meeting and he reported it to the Cabinet, but Haughey dismissed it as a chance encounter. In November 1969, a Belfast republican leader named John Kelly, and Haughey's brother Jock, traveled to London to purchase arms, but Kelly became suspicious that their plot had been discovered and they returned to Ireland.