However, the basic inefficiency of this ‘will to win’ approach – which of course also nearly made of Portlaoise jail another H Block – was fatally underlined by its failure to protect the new British Ambassador, Christopher Ewart-Biggs. A few days after his appointment he met with Garda officers to discuss his security. He raised with them, according to his diary, the possibility of an attack on his car. ‘It hasn’t happened yet, ’ he was told.78 Nine days later it did happen and he was killed by a Provisional IRA bomb a few hundred yards from his official residence.
