Ireland feared a doomsday scenario could develop in British-ruled Northern Ireland in the 1970s if sectarian violence descended into all-out civil war, newly-released archives showed Tuesday .

In 1978 Troubles atrocities including the Provisional IRA's bombing of the La Mon House hotel.

LOYALIST prisoners assisted IRA inmates on the dirty protest, by passing through to them parcels from outside the prison, according to a 1978 NIO paper.

THE PROVISIONAL IRA sent a message to the British government in 1978 that it was willing to enter talks on ending its campaign, according to a sensitive document released at the UK National Archives in London.

President Eamon de Valera accepted gifts from Colonel Gaddafi the same year Libya began arming the IRA, official state papers reveal.

Visitor restrictions were put in two hospitals in Dublin and Waterford today because of an outbreak of the winter vomiting bug.