The independent Irish state stayed neutral from 1939 to 1945, a period known there as ‘the Emergency’. Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, was at war. Both were bombed. Here is what the sources say about neutrality, the raids, and the Irish who served.
On 2 September 1939 de Valera told the Dáil that neutrality was the best policy, and a state of emergency was declared. The Emergency Powers Act 1939 followed on 3 September, giving the government sweeping powers including internment and censorship of press and post. The Act lapsed on 2 September 1946; the state of emergency was not rescinded until 1 September 1976. [source] [source]
Neutrality had limits in practice. The sources list Allied use of the Donegal Corridor, close co-operation with Allied intelligence, and Atlantic weather reports, including one from Blacksod Bay lighthouse. In February 1945 Viscount Cranborne told the British War Cabinet that the Irish government had been ‘willing to accord us any facilities which would not be regarded as overtly prejudicing their attitude to neutrality’. [source]
The phrase ‘neutral on the side of the Allies’ is often used of this period. We did not find it attributed in the sources read, so we quote Cranborne instead.
| Date | Where | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 26 August 1940 | Campile, Co. Wexford | A daylight raid on the Shelbourne Co-operative creamery killed three women: Mary Ellen Kent, Catherine Kent and Kathleen Hurley. Germany paid £9,000 compensation in 1943. Why it happened has never been fully explained. [source] [source] |
| 20 December 1940 | Glasthule, Co. Dublin; near Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan | Two bombs at Glasthule injured three people; a third near Carrickmacross slightly injured one. [source] |
| 1–2 January 1941 | Meath, Carlow, Kildare, Wicklow, Wexford, Dublin | In Carlow a house at Knockroe was destroyed, killing three people. On 2 January bombs fell at Terenure, Dublin, without deaths. [source] |
| 3 January 1941 | Donore Terrace, Dublin | Three houses destroyed and about 50 damaged; 20 people injured, no deaths. [source] |
| 31 May 1941 | North Strand, Dublin | The worst raid: four bombs, the last falling on North Strand. Death tolls differ by source (see below). West Germany accepted responsibility after the war and by 1958 had paid £327,000. [source] [source] |
Other incidents are mentioned in some accounts; we list only those described in the sources read.
Why the bombs fell is still argued over: navigational error, a warning to Ireland after it helped Belfast, or British interference with German radio beams, which Churchill later suggested. [source]
After the Easter Tuesday raid, 71 firemen with 13 fire tenders from Dundalk, Drogheda, Dublin and Dún Laoghaire crossed the border to help, within two hours of being asked. They stayed three days. De Valera protested to Berlin and, at Castlebar on 20 April 1941, gave his ‘they are our people’ speech. [source]
The article gives deaths for three of the four raids but no combined total, so we do not add one. See County Antrim.
Between 1939 and 1942 the Defence Forces built 83 coastal lookout posts. Large EIRE signs were later laid out on the coast; Michael Kennedy’s history of the Coast Watching Service says they were meant to cut the number of aircraft landing after losing their bearings, and were built at the behest of the American authorities. Some survive, mostly in the west; those at Loop Head, Co. Clare, and Dursey Island, Co. Cork, have been restored. [source]
Irish merchant ships also painted the tricolour and EIRE on their sides; the neutrality article says twenty per cent of Irish seamen were killed in the war. [source]
Irish citizens could serve in the British forces. The neutrality article says at least 50,000 fought in the British Army, with others in the Merchant Navy and RAF, and that 4,983 members of the Irish Defence Forces deserted to join British and Allied forces. [source]
Emergency Powers Order 362 of 8 August 1945 took away deserters’ pension entitlements and barred them from public-sector jobs for seven years; opponents in the Dáil called it ‘the starvation order’. The Defence Forces (Second World War Amnesty and Immunity) Act 2013 gave an amnesty rather than a pardon, because under the Constitution a pardon can only be granted individually by the President. It covered 4,634 people under the 1945 order or the 1946 act, and about 2,500 others. The neutrality article calls it a pardon. [source]
On 2 May 1945 de Valera, with Joe Walshe of External Affairs, called on the German minister Eduard Hempel at his home in Dún Laoghaire to express official condolences on Hitler’s death, following the protocol used on the death of a head of state with a legation in Ireland. President Hyde called separately on 3 May. No other Western European democracy did the same, and the visits caused a storm of protest in the United States. De Valera wrote that not calling ‘would have been an act of unpardonable discourtesy to the German nation and to Dr Hempel’. [source] [source]
Dáil Éireann declared a state of emergency on 2 September 1939, and the Emergency Powers Act was passed the next day, giving the government powers including internment and censorship. The Act lapsed in 1946; the state of emergency itself was not rescinded until 1 September 1976.
Sources differ: de Valera told the Dáil 27 on 5 June 1941; the Wikipedia article on the bombing of Dublin says 28; the article on the Emergency says 38.
Yes. After the Easter Tuesday raid, by 6 am and within two hours of a request for help, 71 firemen with 13 fire tenders from Dundalk, Drogheda, Dublin and Dún Laoghaire were on their way north.
The article on Irish neutrality says at least 50,000 fought in the British Army, with others in the Merchant Navy and RAF. Separately, 4,983 members of the Irish Defence Forces deserted to join British and Allied forces.
Not strictly. In 2013 they were given an amnesty, often reported as a pardon: the Defence Forces (Second World War Amnesty and Immunity) Act 2013. The EPO 362 article notes that under the Constitution a pardon can only be granted individually by the President.
Wikipedia articles read October 2026, with the works they cite. Spotted an error? Tell us.