Justice For My Father : 'A must-read' - Paul Williams

On 25 March 1983 Brian Stack, chief prison officer at Portlaoise Prison, was shot while off duty as he left the National Boxing Stadium in Dublin, and Justice For My Father is his son's account of what followed. He lived for about 18 months, paralysed and with severe brain damage, and died on 29 September 1984, leaving his wife Sheila and their three young sons. Austin was 14 at the time. For readers interested in the Troubles, the book shows that period through the experience of a victim's family.

According to Laois Today, the family pressed the Garda from 2006, learned that physical evidence from the original inquiry had been mislaid, and received an apology from the Garda Commissioner in 2019 for failings in the investigation. In 2013 Gerry Adams arranged a meeting at which a man described as a former senior IRA figure read a statement acknowledging that IRA members had shot Brian Stack. The IRA side said the shooting was not sanctioned, a claim the author disputes. He and Adams have since disagreed in public about what was said at that meeting. No one has been convicted of the killing, and the Garda investigation is described as ongoing.

The author is a retired Assistant Governor in the Irish Prison Service who lives in Portlaoise, advocates restorative justice and campaigns for a post conflict commission in Ireland.

Ray Burke, reviewing for The Irish Times, praised the family's persistence and called the book "an important and bleak retrospective on Ireland during the Troubles". The cover carries an endorsement from crime journalist Paul Williams. In March 2025 Austin Stack presented a copy of Justice For My Father to President Michael D Higgins at an Áras event for innocent victims of the Troubles.