The Court of Appeal has certified that the conviction of Osgur Breatnach for his alleged involvement in the 1976 Sallins mail train robbery was a miscarriage of justice, accepting that he had “no hand, act or part” in the offence.
Delivering judgment in December 2025, the three-judge Court of Appeal held that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) did not dispute that Mr Breatnach, now aged 75, was not involved in the robbery, which the court stated amounted to an acknowledgement of his factual innocence.
The court also accepted that evidence from another individual, John Fitzpatrick, constituted a newly discovered fact relevant to the application. Having regard to this evidence, alongside previous reviews of the case and evidence concerning the circumstances surrounding the convictions, the court was satisfied that the statutory threshold for granting a certificate of miscarriage of justice had been met.
In March 1976, a mail train travelling between Dublin and Cork was robbed at Sallins, Co Kildare, with approximately £200,000 stolen. The robbery was later claimed by the IRA.
Mr Breatnach was tried alongside Nicky Kelly and Brian McNally before the Special Criminal Court. All three men were convicted in 1978. Mr Breatnach, who consistently denied involvement, received a 12-year sentence and served approximately 18 months in prison before his conviction was overturned on appeal in 1980.
The Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the convictions of Mr Breatnach and Mr McNally after finding that it could not be satisfied that their statements to Gardaí had been made voluntarily. The court also criticised the fact that Mr Breatnach had been denied access to a solicitor while in Garda custody.
The men had alleged that their confessions had been fabricated and obtained through coercion by a Garda unit known as the “Heavy Gang”. Allegations concerning the treatment of suspects in Garda custody were later examined in reports by organisations including Amnesty International.
Following the quashing of his conviction, Mr Breatnach applied to the Court of Appeal for a certificate of miscarriage of justice, relying on his factual innocence and newly discovered evidence.
That evidence included material from John Fitzpatrick, who had been questioned in relation to the robbery but was never charged. Mr Fitzpatrick later alleged that he had been forced to sign a statement implicating himself in the robbery and provided evidence which challenged the reliability of statements attributed to him by Gardaí.
The application also relied on a later review of the convictions of Mr Kelly and his co-accused, in which the DPP and Attorney General identified significant concerns regarding the reliability of the evidence used to secure the convictions. The review concluded that, had the decision to prosecute been taken in light of the later information available, prosecution would have been unlikely.
Delivering judgment, Ms Justice Kennedy noted that the DPP did not dispute that Mr Breatnach had “no hand, act or part” in the robbery.
The Court further noted that the DPP accepted that the evidence of Mr Fitzpatrick amounted to a newly discovered fact capable of supporting the application.
Having considered the totality of the evidence, including the circumstances surrounding the original convictions, the subsequent quashing of those convictions and the new material available, the Court found that the requirements for a miscarriage of justice certificate had been satisfied.
The Court emphasised that the application was not based solely on procedural defects arising during the original investigation and trial, but also on evidence demonstrating that Mr Breatnach had not participated in the offence.
Accordingly, the Court of Appeal granted the certificate of miscarriage of justice and awarded Mr Breatnach his legal costs.
The Court of Appeal’s decision formally recognises that Osgur Breatnach’s conviction arising from the Sallins mail train robbery was a miscarriage of justice, almost five decades after he was first convicted.