A bomb planted by the IRA in a farmhouse at Garryhinch on the County Laois-County Offaly border in Ireland was detonated.

[3] On the night of 16 October 1976, the Gardaí received an anonymous telephone call stating that Provisional IRA members were at a vacant farm at Garryhinch, near Portarlington, County Laois, engaged in activity connected with a plot to target a local Fine Gael TD and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defence, Oliver J. Flanagan.

[5] However, the telephone call was bogus and was from the IRA itself, aimed at luring Garda officers to the farmhouse as a part of a planned ambush by the organisation against the Irish Government in retaliation for its institution of the 'Emergency Powers Act' (1976), which passed into Irish Statute that same night, aimed at combating escalating paramilitary activity in Ireland associated with the IRA's armed campaign.

The incident triggered a political crisis between the executive and President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, prompted by his earlier referring of the Emergency Powers bill to the Supreme Court.

[13] Although there were a number of arrests by the Garda in an intensive search across the Laois-Offaly district for the perpetrators of the ambush, which resulted in a signed confession from a prime suspect, no one has ever been convicted or brought to trial for it.