HM Prison Armagh 1979, Agnes Wallace (40), a prison officer, was shot dead and three colleagues were injured in an Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) gun and grenade attack outside the prison. The prison was the scene of a protest by female Irish republican prisoners demanding the reinstatement of political status, although the numbers involved were much smaller than in the Maze (also known as Long Kesh) men's prison. As all women prisoners in Northern Ireland already had the right to wear their own clothes, they did not stage any sort of blanket protest, but the no wash protest included the smearing of
Mountjoy Prison helicopter escape thousand members of the Irish Defence Forces and Garda Síochána ensued. Mallon was recaptured at a Gaelic Athletic Association dance in a hotel near Portlaoise on 10 December 1973, and imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison. He escaped from there in a mass break-out on 18 August 1974, when nineteen prisoners escaped after overpowering guards and using gelignite to blast through the gates. He was recaptured in Foxrock in January 1975 and returned to Portlaoise Prison. O'Hagan was recaptured in Dublin in early 1975, and also imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison. After the end of his original twelve-month sentence, he was immediately arrested