The Doherty brothers were known cyclists and sportsmen in the Andersontown area; Kieran won an Antrim Gaelic football medal at minor level in 1971.

[2] Doherty joined Fianna Éireann in Autumn 1971, quickly being recruited into the Provisional IRA thereafter.

The Army returned again ten days later, when he turned 17, but Doherty had been warned and fled across the border to stay with an uncle in Limerick.

[5] In August 1976, while he was out to set a bomb, the van he was in was chased by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

He died at the age of 25 in the 1981 Irish hunger strike in the Maze Prison (known to republicans as Long Kesh).

The two seats gained by Anti H-Block candidates denied Taoiseach Charles Haughey the chance to form a government,[8] and the 22nd Dáil saw a Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition government come to office, with Garret FitzGerald as Taoiseach.