1972 and 1973 Dublin bombings

Between 26 November 1972 and 20 January 1973, there were four paramilitary bombings in the centre of Dublin, Ireland. Three civilians were killed and 185 people were injured. No group ever claimed responsibility for the attacks and nobody was ever charged in connection with the bombings. The first bombing in Burgh Quay may have been carried out by former associates of the Littlejohn brothers who were Secret Intelligence Service provocateurs, in a successful attempt to provoke an Irish government clampdown against the Provisional IRA, while the other three bombings were possibly perpetrated by loyalist paramilitaries, specifically the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), with British military or intelligence assistance. The UVF claimed in 1993 to have carried out the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings which incurred the greatest loss of life in a single day throughout the 30-year conflict known as the Troubles.

On 1 December 1972, when two separate car bombs exploded in Eden Quay and Sackville Place, Dáil Éireann was debating a bill to amend the Offences Against the State Act which would enact stricter measures against the Provisional IRA and other paramilitary groups. As a result of the two bombings, which killed two men and wounded 131, the Dáil voted for the amendment, which introduced special emergency powers to combat the IRA. It is believed that the 26 November and 1 December bombings were executed to influence the outcome of the voting. Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron commissioned an official inquiry into the bombings. The findings were published in a report in November 2004.

The bombings in Dublin occurred at the end of what was the bloodiest year in the entire 30-year-old religious-political conflict known as the Troubles, which had erupted at the end of the 1960s. Following the Bloody Sunday incident in Derry on 30 January 1972 when the British Army's Parachute Regiment shot dead 14 unarmed Catholic civilians during an anti-internment demonstration, a torrent of anti-British sentiment was unleashed in Ireland and beyond. An angry crowd in Dublin attacked the British embassy and burnt it to the ground. The Official IRA responded with the 1972 Aldershot Bombing in England, at the headquarters of the Parachute Regiment. This attack killed seven civilians. In retaliation for the shootings in Derry, the Provisional IRA escalated its armed campaign with a series of bombings across Northern Ireland which led to a high number of civilian casualties.