In 1970 Blaney's career was radically altered when, alongside Charles Haughey, he was involved in the Arms Crisis and stood accused of clandestinely arranging to provide weapons to the newly-emergent Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Although later acquitted of wrongdoing in an Irish court, Blaney's involvement in the crisis saw him stripped of his ministries and eventually forced his expulsion from Fianna Fáil.

A dogged political campaigner, Blaney managed to retain his seat in Donegal and remained a TD for another two decades, running under the banner of "Independent Fianna Fáil".

Neil Blaney was born in 1922 in the village of Rossnakill in rural Fanad Peninsula in the north of County Donegal, in Ireland.

Blaney was first elected to Dáil Éireann for the Donegal East constituency in a by-election in December 1948,[3] following the death of his father from cancer.

His dedicated bands of supporters earned the sobriquet 'the Donegal Mafia', and succeeded in getting Des O'Malley and Gerry Collins elected to the Dáil.

[4] Following Fianna Fáil's victory at the 1957 general election Éamon de Valera, as Taoiseach, brought new blood into the Cabinet in the shape of Blaney, Jack Lynch, Kevin Boland and Mícheál Ó Móráin.

During his tenure it became possible to pay rates (property taxes) by instalment and he also introduced legislation which entitled non-nationals to vote in local elections.

Blaney was unimpressed with the choice and, with the support of the like-minded Kevin Boland, he threw his hat in the ring, declaring himself to be the "Radical Republican" candidate.

He had also been one of a four-member Cabinet sub-committee set up to decide on government policy to Northern Ireland together with Charles Haughey, Pádraig Faulkner, and Joseph Brennan.

In December 1969 Blaney declared in Donegal that "the Fianna Fáil Party has never taken a decision to rule out the use of force if the circumstances in the Six Counties so demanded".

[6] Opposition leader Liam Cosgrave was informed by the Garda that a plot to import arms existed and included government members.

Kevin Boland resigned in sympathy, while Mícheál Ó Móráin was dismissed one day earlier in a preemptive strike to ensure that he was not the Minister for Justice when the crisis broke.

Haughey and Blaney were subsequently tried in court along with an army Officer, Captain James Kelly, and Albert Luykx, a Belgian businessman who allegedly used his contacts to buy the arms.

He was defeated by George Colley in a vote for the position of Joint Honorary Treasurer at the 1971 Ardfheis, while his constituency colleague, Liam Cunningham, had been appointed a Parliamentary Secretary in the cabinet reshuffle.

In the Dáil, Blaney abstained on a motion of no confidence on the worthiness of cabinet minister Jim Gibbons for office, sponsored by the opposition.

The volatile mixture of calculation, resentment, sophistication, provincialism, ruthlessness, and nostalgia which he displayed is reminiscent of other political figures of his intermediate generation; he might well have been taoiseach but instead became a catalyst for the formation of the Provisional IRA”.