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Showing posts with label Creeslough disaster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Creeslough disaster. Show all posts
Hugh O’Donnell –✍ Breaking news.
‘We must put our political and personal differences to the one side in the interests of these families and the victims’ - Cllr Frank McBrearty Jr

Donegal County Council has unanimously backed a call for an independent statutory judicial public inquiry into the explosion in Creeslough, County Donegal.

The explosion on October 7, 2022, killed 10 people: Shauna Flanagan (5), her father Robert Garwe, Leona Harper, Hugh Kelly, Jessica Gallagher, Martin McGill, James O’Flaherty, Martina Martin, Catherine O’Donnell and her son James Monaghan.

Speaking at Donegal County Council’s November plenary, Cllr Frank McBrearty Jr, who proposed the motion, said it was vital the proposed public inquiry had “an open terms of reference”.

(The full text of the motion is carried at the end of this article.)

He called on the new, incoming Dublin Government to establish the public inquiry “within its first 100 days in office”.

Speaking to his motion, Cllr McBrearty first referenced Martin Luther King Jr who said:

An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I believe these comments by Martin Luther King sum up the injustices the Creeslough families are enduring daily, 

It has been two years, one month and 18 days since the tragic events happened. This is the worst tragedy to hit Donegal in this century - 10 innocent people ranging from five-years-old to 59-years-old lost their lives that terrible day.”

Acknowledging Monday’s meeting was the first time he had spoken publicly about the Creeslough victims and their families, Cllr McBrearty said he had been approached for advice by The Harper family at the beginning of this year.

He said:

I have listened to them about their concerns and what has happened over the last two years. My advice to them was that they needed an independent statutory judicial public inquiry - that is what they needed to focus on if they wanted the full truth about what happened that terrible day.
As county councillors in local government we are given a mandate by the people to represent them on a wide range of issues. As the Great Irish American Politician Thomas Tip O’Neil once said “all politics is local”.
Today we must put our political and personal differences to the one side in the interests of these families and the victims.
We must try and understand that these families are heartbroken because they have endured the loss of the people they loved most in their lives.

The Independent Raphoe councillor said he could not imagine what it was like to lose a family member in such a terrible and untimely way.

“We all lose people we love at some time in our lives, but we never expect it to be in the way it happened in Cresslough,” he said.

Turning to his call for an independent statutory judicial public inquiry, Cllr McBrearty conceded some people might say it was “a waste of time”.

“We will hear the usual arguments against a tribunal - they are a waste of time, go on for too long.”

“Maybe they do,” said Cllr McBrearty, “and certain aspects of our media may agree and they are entitled to their opinions.

However, as the only public representative in this Council chamber and county today who has the experience of participating in a tribunal of inquiry, It is my firm opinion this is the only way the Creeslough families will ever get any justice worth talking about.
The one thing that these families will never be able to get back is their loved ones who were taken away from them unlawfully on October 7, 2022.
Why did this happen and who is to blame? Those are two of the most important questions, in my opinion, which must be answered by the State. Of course there are many other questions that need answering as well and only a public inquiry can deliver this.
When our Government does have the courage to establish this much needed tribunal, it has a moral obligation to ensure it is independent; the terms of reference are open; and that the families of the victims are legally represented and guaranteed full legal aid, on a par with those who will be represented by the State directly and indirectly.

There are currently a number of ongoing investigations into the Creeslough explosion.

Cllr McBrearty said certain commentators might use the excuse a tribunal could not be established until these were concluded.

He added:

This is completely incorrect. I know because the precedent was set when the Morris Tribunal was established in March 2002, while a number of Garda Investigations, Garda Complaints Board investigations, Criminal and Civil Court cases were ongoing.
None of these interfered with the other because each had its statutory obligations and remits. This sets the legal precedent which allows our next Government to establish the public inquiry to which the Creeslough families are entitled.

Giving an insight into his struggles with Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to what he described as “an injustice”, Cllr McBrearty said he knew and understood what the Creeslough families were dealing with on a daily basis. He added: 

The mental health issues, such as panic attacks, anxiety, flashbacks, eating disorders, depression, suicide and much more which are associated with PTSD are just some of the things and feelings that these families will endure for many years to come.
“Time is a healer’, they say but I am not sure this is the case. It is okay not to be okay. However, until these families are given the full truth about why and what happened to their loved ones that terrible day, only then will it be okay. Maybe then they will be able to get back to some sort of normality.
I have been assured by Charlie Ward that if he is elected to Dáil Éireann he will fight to get a tribunal established by the next Government.
I am also calling on the local and national media to ask our General Election candidates to give a firm commitment - if they are elected on Friday, November 29, they too will fight to ensure an independent statutory judicial public inquiry is established into the Creeslough Explosion within the first 100 days of our new Government.
The truth and nothing but the truth is the only thing that will set these families free from their pain and suffering they are enduring every day without their loved ones. The worst form of injustice is pretend justice and that is why the elected members must fully support these families today.

If the incoming Government does not establish a public inquiry into the Creeslough explosion within the next six months, Cllr McBrearty pledged to re-submit his motion “again and again until they do the right thing by these families”.

He added:

There is a Latin proverb which runs ‘Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum’ - Let Justice be done though the Heavens fall. If our new Government does not establish a public inquiry into the Creeslough explosion, the Heavens will fall.

The full text of Cllr Frank McBrearty’s motion to Donegal County Council

I am requesting that the new incoming Government establish within its first 100 days an Independent Statutory Judicial Public Inquiry with an open terms of reference into the explosion in Cresslough, Co Donegal that Killed 10 people on the 7th Oct 2022, and I am calling on all the elected members of Donegal County Council to support my motion for this much needed Public Inquiry.

⏪Hugh O’Donnell is on the ground in Donegal.

Donegal County Council Calls For Creeslough Public Inquiry Within Government’s First 100 Days In Office

Anthony McIntyre ✒ In their immediate aftermath disasters are perhaps felt more than spoken about.

Words tend to sound impotent, unheard in the crescendo of grief. Maybe when a disaster is natural or by misadventure, with no identifiable perpetrator lurking behind a crushing act of violence resulting in mass casualties, the words can find no outlet in an eruption of condemnation. With no culprit to blame, they swirl around in the vortex of grief without reaching an exit - the probing question of why rather than the pointing finger of you.

Paul Stewart, a doctor in Creeslough for 23 years but who had grown up in Belfast, spoke about the sight of destruction that left ten people dead. Being familiar from his time spent in a frequently bombed city, sadly the death and destruction was not a new experience for him. Observing the rubble and wreckage his thoughts were shared by me. Casualties of that magnitude immediately project images of Bloody Sunday, Dublin-Monaghan, the Shankill fish shop bombing. For those much younger than either I or Dr Stewart, it might have looked like a scene from Ukraine or Gaza.

On this occasion a Sinn Fein leader could not be accused of crocodile tears by a media scum eager to devour her. Yesteryear, the party’s previous leader would seek to explain the debris rather than excavate it. If that is progress, Creeslough is not the place to celebrate it.

As I went to watch today’s match between Arsenal and Liverpool my thoughts extended to the family of fourteen-year-old Leona Harper, an avid Liverpool supporter, her dad an Arsenal one. They should have been watching the match together. As I sat on the settee, my teenage son perched next to me, I experienced that cold shudder. What matters the outcome of a soccer match? Liverpool's loss today can never approach the loss of a child.


Usually, when I see clerics near disasters, my ire is sparked, feeling they are vultures really preying while acting out praying. Their ersatz beseeching and empty piety causes me to resile from their utterances. Not this time. In Creeslough the clergy have played a laudable role: there to heal not harm, they have become an anchor for a community all at sea, giving comfort, not condemnation. No doubt some evangelicals will be putting it down to god’s wrath – heavenly anger at the success of Repeal the 8th and the availability of same sex marriage. But there was not a scintilla of that from the clergy on the front line in this tragedy. It required no effort to discern the solace the community took from their efforts.

Donegal often “ignored and even abandoned by national government” is no stranger to tragedy, with a series of fatal misfortunes visiting it over the years. It will emerge from the latest but not unscathed. Disasters are like a thief in the night. They upend everything and forever. The smashed mirror might carefully and painstakingly be put together again but the image we see in it will never be the same.

Una Mullaly suggested that "there is no closure with tragedy, but there can be comfort." Perhaps, therefore, hope and comfort can be drawn from the words of Taoiseach Micheál Martin. Speaking last year about losing two of his own children he said: 

routine and getting back with life is the only way. You can’t just stay down. You have to get back up again, and you have to go through the routines of life. There’s always new experiences come in life that will lift you. It’s not easy, and you don’t forget, and you live with it, but you have to try and pick yourself up.


At this stage that might sound an insurmountable task. But in the person of Micheál Martin there is the pallbearer of children who managed to walk through the storm of grief. 


⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Creeslough

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