According to Ed Moloney in A Secret History of The IRA it was Breton Nationalists, at a meeting in early 1972, who suggested to the PIRA to seek assistance from Qaddafi's regime.

In June 1972 Qaddafi in a radio broadcast announced support for "the revolutionaries of Ireland who oppose Britain and are motivated by Nationalism and religion".

In August 1972 two members of the IRA Army Council met Libyan agents in the offices of the Libyan Trade Mission in Warsaw. Money and weapons were offered, along with an IRA envoy position in Tripoli.

The envoy chosen was not an active IRA member, but a sympathizer with experience teaching English to Libyans.

Over the next few years over $3.5M was funnelled to the IRA through London Banks and shipments of weapons were made. Exactly how many is not known but one intercepted by the Irish Naval Service in March 1973 had 5 tons of rifles, pistols, ammunition and explosives on board. Also on board was Joe Cahill, one of the two IRA Army Council members at the 1972 Warsaw meeting.

In November 1974 the envoy, installed by the Libyans in a villa in Tripoli's embassy district like a quasi-ambassador, went on a solo run by hosting a conference with representatives of the Loyalist UDA as some sort of unsanctioned peace initiative.

Neither the IRA nor the Libyans were impressed. The envoy was put on a flight out of the country by the Libyan police in 1975, and the PIRA-Qaddafi relationship cooled but was not abandoned.

In the 1980s Libya's relations with the UK, along with the US, deteriorated. For example US air raids on Libya in 1986, launched as a response to its support of terrorist groups, killed his adopted baby daughter and were launched from British airbases.

In the mid 1980s Libya therefore stepped up its aid to the IRA. Nasser Ashour, a senior member of the Libyan Intelligence Service, travelled to Ireland on pretexts and identities such as a trade official negotiating cattle exports, to meet the Army Council and offer $10M and 300 tons of materiel, with potentially more to follow.

The US based Harrison network supplying arms to PIRA had been rolled up by the FBI in 1981 and a shipment sent from Boston in 1984, with the involvement of gangster Whitey Bulger, was intercepted by the Irish Naval Service. So the deal the Libyans were offering was attractive, if logistically challenging.

A struggling Dublin businessman named Adrian Hopkins was contacted to run the shipments, on vessels he bought with money given to him by the IRA. He bought a fishing boat and made several trips to Malta where he collected IRA crew and then met a Libyan vessel out at sea to transfer the materiel. Off the Irish coast the shipment was transferred to smaller boats, brought ashore and distributed to caches. Out of caution the shipments escalated in tonnage; 7, 10+, 14.

Then Hopkins bought a larger vessel that in October 1986 delivered 105 tons of materiel: AKs, DHSK HMGs, RPG7s, semtex and allegedly SA-7 MANPADS.

Finally in October 1987 another vessel, The Eksund, collected a 150 ton shipment, from Tripoli itself. The ship's steering failed off the French coast and an attempt to scuttle the vessel was reportedly sabotaged. Those on board were taken into French custody.

Hopkins was bailed by the French and skipped back to Ireland where he got a three year sentence after 11 of the 12 charges against him were dropped. It was believed that he had informed, at least after his arrest if not before. Perhaps surprisingly he wasn't killed but was let off with a warning to not write a planned book about his exploits. There was reason to suspect other informers also.

The Libyans were unhappy and they suspended the cash payments. Apparently they were particularly annoyed about the involvement of non-IRA members like Hopkins, who confirmed the Libyan connection after their arrest. If true this attitude was a little po-faced as Qaddafi himself told the British newspaper the Observer in March 1987 that he had increased arms supplies to the IRA in retaliation for US bombing in the previous year; and in January 1986 Irish authorities had discovered AKs in boxes marked "Libyan Armed Forces".

In a curious post-script one of the Irish Naval vessels involved in intercepting the shipment from Boston in 1984 was later decommissioned, sold to a broker in the Netherlands, and recommisioned in 2018 as Al Karama, the flagship of Libyan warlord General Hafter.