Planning grant for 246 homes at Cork site where executed RIC constable believed to be secretly buried
Planning has been granted for 246 homes to be built at a Cork site where the secret burial place of an executed RIC constable is believed to be located.
An Bord Pleanála upheld planning permission on May 6 for Clockstrike Ltd to build the houses and a creche at Ringwood, Shean Upper in Blarney.
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Irish Times
7 hours ago
- Irish Times
Whether the abuse happens in Rathfarnham or west Belfast, the story is the same
Last weekend Máiría Cahill left a Belfast hospital bed and drove four hours to speak in the Galway Arts Festival 's First Thought series. As her interviewer, I expected moderate audience interest. It's been 15 years since she first went public in the Sunday Tribune about her alleged rape and abuse as a 16-year-old child by an IRA member and the heinous IRA 'investigation' which forced her to confront her abuser. Eleven years since a pivotal Spotlight BBC documentary on her case. Ten years since the former DPP for England and Wales, Keir Starmer, was asked to review the case and said he was sorry the Public Prosecution Service had let her down, soon followed by the NI Chief Constable's public apology to her and the other two victims after a shambolic trial. Seven years since the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman revealed how as far back as 2000 CID and Special Branch had intelligence that her alleged abuser, Martin Morris - who had denied all wrongdoing - was abusing children and the IRA were investigating it. READ MORE Two years almost, since her book, Rough Beast: My Story and the Reality of Sinn Féin – described as 'shocking, important and unputdownable' by Roddy Doyle – was published. Yet such was the power of her quiet, measured, devastating delivery to a packed theatre on Saturday that the audience, visibly stunned, rose at the end to give her a thunderous standing ovation. To any other speaker, that visceral response would have been energising, but backstage she was drained to the point of speechlessness. It was a telling insight into the price that abuse victims continue to pay. Part of what continues to make her story so compelling after all this time, of course, is the involvement in that so-called 'investigation' of people with high status in the national political mainstream since that smart, funny 16-year-old girl was groomed, violated, isolated and often terrified for her life. She continues because she believes Sinn Féin leaders have never properly addressed the brutality of those investigations nor the generational reach of that savage misogynistic culture into the communities they ruled. But a larger part of her story is common to almost every case of abuse. It's in the context and the detail. The physical pain, confusion and humiliation, the gaslighting, the sudden shocking hostility of the family or tribe or institution closing ranks to protect itself, the urge to save other potential victims, the sense of a young, innocent mind and body being tested almost to destruction. One of the most agonising elements for any listener is the isolation invariably forced on the victims. No one is coming to help. It wasn't Cahill herself, but women – older Republican women – who 'reported' her complaints to the paramilitaries, despite the fact that they must have known the repercussions for her. Cahill – whose great uncle Joe Cahill founded the Provisional IRA – herself knew what happened to people who gave evidence against the IRA. The resulting sense of isolation for such a child is unimaginable, the damage unfathomable. How such children endure is a mystery. The case of the three remarkable Brennan sisters , Catherine Wrightstone, Paula Fay and Yvonne Crist, finally reached an endpoint in the criminal courts last week when the second of their brothers, Richard Brennan, was jailed for sexual offences against them in the 1970s and 1980s . They describe a childhood of suffocating fear: fear of unstable and violent parents, of their two abusive brothers, of revealing their terrible secrets to outsiders and not only jeopardising the family's reputation but Richard's aspirations for the priesthood, and fear of a wrathful God. In Máiría Cahill's case, her isolation was not rooted in fear of her parents – who still can't bring themselves to read her book – but rational terror of the larger tribe's vengeance. For the Brennan sisters in leafy Rathfarnham, Dublin, their isolation was about protecting reputations. When they tried to advocate for themselves they were failed at every level – by their parents, by the school, by the failure of state bodies to follow up. In 1984, when 12-year-old Catherine disclosed her abuse at Richard's hands to a trusted school connection, her parents were informed and raged at the child in disbelief. Family therapy meetings, organised following a referral by a hospital unable to diagnose the source of Catherine's lower limb disorder, were cut short by the parents. Lash marks on her body were noted by a teacher, but nothing was done. A poignant detail of the sisters' story all these years later is the harrowing internal battle common to many abuse survivors; that they should have found a way to speak out to protect others, even in the face of conditioning from the cradle. How do they endure? In that context it's important to remember the hundreds, maybe thousands, of vulnerable abused girls who are now no more than pawns in the Maga civil war over the Jeffrey Epstein files. Virginia Giuffre , the most prominent Epstein survivor who turned vocal anti-sex trafficking activist, was first abused by a family friend at the age of seven. Then at 15 while working a summer job at Mar-a-Lago was spotted by Ghislaine Maxwell and 'passed around like a platter of fruit' among her and Epstein's friends. Giuffre's multimillion dollar payouts from Prince Andrew, Maxwell and the Epstein estate brought no closure. Amid accusations of mental instability from her estranged husband – whom she accused of violent possessiveness – Giuffre lost custody of their children. She was just 41 when she took her own life in April. And of the long list of names associated with Epstein, Maxwell happens to be the only one serving time.
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
Michael McDowell pushed for British amnesty for IRA members without trial, UK files reveal
Michael McDowell argued as attorney general in 2000 that the British government could avoid a struggle to pass Westminster legislation to give 'on-the-run' IRA members an amnesty. Instead, Mr McDowell, who is now a member of Seanad Éireann, repeatedly suggested that the British could use a centuries-old law to grant pardons without prosecuting any of them. This seems to have been met with astonishment by British officials. The difficulties posed by Sinn Féin's demands for 'on-the-run' IRA members – some of whom were sought for offences such as murder – to be given guarantees features in British archive files released on Tuesday. The treatment of the IRA 'on the runs', better known simply as 'OTRs', became a major controversy in 2014 when it was revealed that nearly 300 IRA members had been given so-called 'comfort letters' saying they were not then wanted by British police. READ MORE The issue emerged in February 2014 when John Downey, an alleged IRA member, faced trial in London for the July 1982 Hyde Park bombing, which killed four British soldiers and seven horses. His Old Bailey trial collapsed when it emerged that he had received his comfort letter in 2007 even though there was an active warrant for his arrest. The trial judge halted the trial after ruling this was an abuse of process. Under Mr McDowell's proposal in 2000, which went farther than the comfort letter tactic later used, the British government would have been able, he said, to avoid bringing strongly opposed immunity legislation before Westminster. The idea 'first surfaced' at a meeting between Irish and British officials in Dublin in early November 2000 when the British side was told Mr McDowell believed London could grant 'pardons before convictions' to IRA members. The proposal was outlined in greater depth to the British side in November 2000 at 'a hastily arranged' meeting, where Mr McDowell was described in a British note as being 'quite a student of the English legal system, and admired its flexibility'. However, British officials doubted the idea from the off, saying a royal pardon could be used only after sentence, while a free pardon could expunge the effects of a conviction. Mr McDowell came back to his idea when he was included in the Irish delegation, which included Bertie Ahern , then taoiseach, which travelled from London with British prime minister Tony Blair for an EU meeting in Zagreb, Croatia, shortly afterwards. Here, Mr McDowell again argued that wanted IRA members could be given 'a prosecution amnesty', citing the decision by the British not to prosecute Soviet spy Anthony Blunt for treachery. 'His basic thesis seemed to be that our legal system was sufficiently flexible to allow immunity to be granted without the need for primary legislation,' the Northern Ireland Office's political director, Bill Jeffreys, told an official in the British attorney general's office. He said he had told Mr McDowell his proposal ran counter to the views of the British attorney general, who was 'unwilling' to give immunity to individuals on general public interest grounds. However, if Mr McDowell was arguing that the Northern Ireland secretary of state could 'pre-empt prosecution in a whole class of cases' then that would be 'an entirely new departure'. Widening the grounds for immunity 'seemed to me to run entirely against the trend, and would be very difficult to justify in today's conditions, when we would be expected to seek the necessary powers from parliament', Mr Jeffreys also said. Separately, the files also show the efforts Sinn Féin made to ensure leading IRA figures in the United States such as Gabriel Megahey would not be deported. Now, 25 years later, they are now facing fresh expulsion attempts by Donald Trump's administration. Bill Clinton , US president at the time, had wanted to 'tie off the loose end' created by the six men's issues before he left office, fearing the incoming George W Bush presidency would be less sympathetic. In 1997, US secretary of state Madeleine Albright 'persuaded the US attorney general to suspend deportation action' against the men on 'the foreign policy grounds that it would contribute to the NI political process'. The importance of the OTR issue to Sinn Féin is evident throughout the files, with the party's Gerry Kelly 'grumbling' to Northern Ireland Office officials 'that the lack of movement was causing Sinn Féin great difficulties'.
Irish Independent
3 days ago
- Irish Independent
Obituary: Father Patrick Ryan, priest known as ‘the Devil's Disciple' for his work as a bomb-maker with the IRA
He was born in Co Tipperary in 1930, the second son of a family of six on a small farm. He joined the Society of the Catholic Apostolate, the Pallottine Fathers, aged 14, became a talented amateur engineer and a mercy pilot as a missionary in Tanganyika. There were clues in his youth to what he would become. His mother was a gifted storyteller who gripped him with stories about her heroism and the wickedness of the Black and Tans a decade before he was born. All you had to do was mention the subject and she was off 'I was captivated by her stories,' he told his biographer, Jennifer O'Leary, in The Padre: The True Story of the Irish Priest Who Armed the IRA with Gaddafi's Money. 'It was like I was back there with her, watching and listening out for the enemy. All she wanted was for us to listen, and we did. All you had to do was mention the subject and she was off, it was in her bones.' From an early age, Ryan displayed characteristics that would be useful in facilitating mass murder: as an eight-year-old poacher of fish, pheasants and rabbits, he showed himself more ruthless than his siblings, who called him Paddy the Skinner. Later, in Tanganyika, he would show an aptitude and enjoyment for big game hunting. When he became a fierce anti-colonialist, he felt remorse for killing three elephants, saying: 'It was elephant country before any man or women.' But he showed no remorse for the men, women and children whose murders he facilitated: 'The only regret I have was that I wasn't more effective; that the bombs made with the components I supplied didn't kill more. That is my one regret.' He was bored with the spiritual part of his job and quit as a curate in 1973. He based himself for a time in Benidorm, collecting millions in donations from the Continent and beyond, which he laundered and delivered to the IRA in complex financial operations. But his major contribution was to transform the efficacy of the IRA's bombs, which had suffered from faulty detonators. In 1975, having spotted Memo Park timers in a Geneva shop window, he purchased the entire stock, which he re-engineered to become perfect bomb timers that would feature in atrocities including the 1979 Warrenpoint massacre of 18 British soldiers and the 1984 Brighton bombing that almost killed Margaret Thatcher. A skilful global arms and finance procurer — 'I set out to go around the world and discover the enemy of my enemy, the Brits, and make their enemy my friend' — he was also quartermaster of a brutally effective IRA murder squad in Belgium and a leading suspect in murders on the Continent. Amid furious international rows, Mrs Thatcher unsuccessfully sought to have him extradited from Belgium and Ireland ('Ryan is a really bad egg,' she told the then taoiseach Charles Haughey). Met with indifference in Belgium, hostility in Ireland and the obduracy of the European Court of Human Rights, she failed at every turn. You never know when you might need to call in a favour Ryan secured 30,000 votes as an Independent candidate in the 1989 European elections in Ireland. In 1993 he was expelled from the Pallottine Order 'for persistent refusal to comply with the legitimate instructions of his superiors'. He fell out with Martin McGuinness ('not to be trusted') and other prominent IRA men such as Joe Cahill ('reckless') and Brian Keenan (who 'should never have been let loose on society'). An attractive young English Protestant became smitten with him in London and sometimes shared the van in which he lived, but he permitted little intimacy in his life. 'I would say she was in love with me, yes,' he said. 'I gave it no thought, but I kept in touch with her because you see, you never know when you might need to call in a favour.' Indeed, she became a money mule until he ditched her as a security risk. 'The trick is to be patient,' he told his biographer, 'because, you see, every person wants something badly, and if you can wait and slowly find out what that something is and then provide it, you're a winner in any walk of life.'
