Taoiseach and Tánaiste address O'Farrell family in Dáil

Local politicians also speak to Shane O'Farrell's family after state apology

Local politicians have given their reaction to the state apology made to Shane O’Farrell’s family yesterday.

The Taoiseach and Tánaiste also spoke about Shane’s case in the Dáil ahead of the Justice Minister’s public apology from the chamber.

Shane O’Farrell was knocked off his bike and killed in a hit-and-run on the evening of August 2, 2011.

The man who killed Shane, Zigimantas Gridziuska had been convicted of 30 offences including heroin possession, road and theft offences, in the months leading up to Shane’s death and was on bail for six of them. He should’ve been in prison at the time he was on the road near Carrickmacross where Shane was killed.

For the 14 years since Shane’s death, his family – and in particular, his mother, Lucia O’Farrell – have been campaigning to know the full truth of why their son’s killer was at large and apparently, able to evade the law.

Yesterday (Tuesday), The Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan issued an apology on behalf of the state to the O’Farrell family for failings in the Irish criminal justice system, which, “failed to protect Shane”.

The O’Farrell family have been campaigning for a public inquiry but, that was ruled out by the minister yesterday.

Before Jim O’Callaghan took to his feet to deliver an 18-minute speech outlining Gridziuska’s convictions and the catalogue of errors which enabled him to evade justice and prison, Taoiseach Micheál Martin spoke to the O’Farrell family who were in the Dáil for the apology.

Describing Shane as “a person every family would be proud of”, Micheál Martin said, “One of the most fundamental duties of the State is to seek to keep our people safe.”

“Shane O’Farrell was exposed to danger to which he should not have been exposed … these Houses of the Oireachtas are united in support, empathy and compassion for the O’Farrell family and what they have gone through. Yet, nothing we do in this House will change what occurred on 2 August 2011.”

Tánaiste Simon Harris spoke after the Taoiseach. He spoke of the first time he met the O’Farrell family in their home when they spent five hours talking about Shane.

“I was in awe of you all. I was in awe of your family, and I was in awe of the might of a mother fighting for justice for her son,” he said to the chamber.

“Nothing we can do or say can ever make up for the grief or sorrow of the O'Farrell family and the anguish of their long campaign for justice, but I hope that an apology today and the actions we are taking alongside it may be some balm for the pain that you bear.”

LOCAL REACTION

Monaghan-based TD David Maxwell (FG) said “the apology would not have happened were it not for the courage and determination of Shane’s parents, Lucia and Jim O’Farrell, and his sisters, Hannah, Gemma, Aimee and Pia”.

The Fine Gael TD welcomed the government’s decision to appoint a senior counsel to examine bail laws in Ireland, and said he thought it “fitting” that the government is setting up a bursary in Shane’s name in the School of Law at UCD.

“This small but fitting tribute will ensure that his memory is always kept alive,” Deputy Maxwell said in a statement.

Cavan-Monaghan TD Brendan Smith (FF) was in the Dáil for yesterday’s apology. He said he and Jim O’Callaghan had “many conversations over the years regarding the need for the concerns of the O'Farrell family [to be] dealt with in the proper way”.

“Unfortunately, it has taken considerable time to get to this position today,” he said.

Paying tribute to the “great grace and dignity” in the way the O’Farrell family went about their campaigning, Deputy Smith said: “I take this opportunity to say Lucia and her family have done the State a great service in what has to have been awfully difficult circumstances to campaign for justice for a son who was taken away so wrongly by a criminal who should not have been at large”.