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Irish Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Galway Film Fleadh 2025: The big winners at the hottest festival in memory, including Gerry Adams basking in adulatory sunshine
We can safely assume it was mere accident that Trisha Ziff's Gerry Adams : A Ballymurphy Man arrived at the 37th Galway Film Fleadh on The Twelfth (of July that is). Such a prominent release was always going to land a Saturday-evening premiere. Nonetheless, there was a pretty irony in Adams escaping the marchers to be lauded in blistering Galway sunshine. As we sweated in the square outside the Town Hall Theatre, the grizzled republican paused for more selfies than came the way of any attending star. Few could reasonably deny that Ziff's film is a sympathetic work. We begin with Adams using a hurley to propel balls into the sea for his pet dogs and then settle in to hear him – comfy in an armchair – talk us through his version of an undeniably extraordinary life. Ziff, an English film-maker who lives and works in Mexico, allows the word 'activist' to do a lot of heavy lifting. 'The words '60 years of activism' act as subtitle. He ponders a return to 'activism' after being released from prison. The film's vagueness about the nature of this activism in the 1970s is sure to raise some hackles, but Adams's gifts as a grimly amusing storyteller maintain attention through a hefty running time. His description of intimidated Catholics arriving as refugees to Ballymurphy in the 1960s is moving and enraging. His analysis of a shift from passive acceptance in the nationalist community is convincing. Ziff leaves it until the closing moments to address the bandoliered elephant in the room. 'I have never disassociated myself from the IRA,' Adams doesn't quite clarify. READ MORE [ Poignant documentary about Sunny Jacobs to be aired at Galway Film Fleadh Opens in new window ] Adams and Ziff took the stage after the world premiere to discuss a well-made film stuffed with fascinating archival footage. Adams, asked why he agreed to the project, noted he was 'persuaded it would be helpful, because most of the stuff that's been done about me is a hatchet job'. Probed about recent experiences, he seemed to make oblique reference to the TV series Say Nothing, which represented him in controversial fashion. 'I don't have the words to actually explain the strange experience of seeing someone pretending to be you,' he said cryptically. Gerry Adams: A Ballymurphy Man took the Fleadh's prize for best international documentary. Elsewhere, the hottest Fleadh in memory – gone are the days of paddling up Shop Street in monsoon floods – confirmed its reputation as the prime spot to premiere Irish features. There were, indeed, more domestic openings than any one person could digest. A fascinating complement to the Gerry Adams film arrived in the form of Trevor Birney's The Negotiator. Also very much on its subject's side, the film offered a warm and deeply researched portrait of Senator George Mitchell from beginnings as an Irish-American boy adopted by inspirational, working-class Lebanese-Americans and on to the army, to the law, to politics, back to the law again and back to politics. The temptation would be to focus acutely on his time as negotiator during the talks that led up the Belfast Agreement. There is plenty on that topic. But Birney gives at least as much time to the rest of a busy, varied career. The Fleadh has long celebrated the Irish documentary. Other true stories attracting attention this year included Mieke Vanmechelen and Michael Holly's beautifully made, elegantly edited, slightly baffling Immrám. The film goes among Siobhán de Paor, spoken word artist, and Diarmuid Lyng, former Wexford hurler, as they exercise beliefs derived from Celtic Christianity, closeness to the land and the eccentric philosophies of John Moriarty. Offering little gloss on their adventures, Immrám allows viewers to make up their own minds about the virtues of incanting prayers while wearing a fox's head. It has a tremendous, sometimes abrasive score by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh. Frank Shouldice told us a touching story about raging against the light in Once We Were Punks. Deep into middle-age, the former members of The Panic Merchants, a Cavan-based post-punk band, come together for one more gig at Whelan's in Dublin. The film, which sold out its Fleadh premiere in no time, takes in fascinating personal stories – Justin Kelly, lead singer, is the son of Captain James Kelly, found not guilty in the 1970 Arms Trial – as it stomps towards stirring affirmation. Few documentaries this year were more bewitching than Nuala O'Connor's lovely, monochrome Dónal Lunny: In Time. The musician meditates wisely on a hugely influential career as colleagues such as Christy Moore and Andy Irvine drop in to remind us of the wild times that accompanied the rise of Planxty and The Bothy Band. There is a wintry sadness to a film that, along with a celebration of the good years, touches on tragedy such as the recent death of Lunny's son, Shane. In Time was cleverly scheduled right before the world premiere of Lance Daly's careering, joyful drama Trad. Megan Nic Fhionnghaile, virtuoso fiddler, takes her first acting role as a traditional player who, divided about the music, flees her Donegal home with an eccentric troupe headed by Aidan Gillen's mad hatter. 'I've never even done a play in school,' the brilliant Nic Fhionnghaile told me. After the screening, Daly, director of Black 47 and Kisses, praised Gillen, whose participation came to the film's rescue after initial financing proved difficult. Daly also brought his admirable dog Basil, costar of Trad, on to the stage. The ecstatic response at the Town Hall on Friday night suggested we had a crowd-pleaser, and, sure enough, Trad took this year's audience prize. After winning Grand Prix in the Generation 14plus section at the Berlin Film Festival last winter, Brendan Canty's fine social-realist drama Christy received its Irish premiere by the Corrib. Daniel Power stars as the title character, a young man who reconnects with his half-brother after teenage years in care. Power plumbs Christy's frailties as he is buffeted about contemporary Cork in a film that revels in compassion for the excluded. Diarmaid Noyes is equally strong as the sibling with whom he has issues that may defy resolution. It is a loose-limbed film with a fine sense of place. The team can add the Fleadh's award for best Irish film to their gong at Berlin. Last year's winner, Kneecap, built on that platform with notable success. Girls & Boys, a nifty romantic drama from Donncha Gilmore, happens upon a neat, fecund scenario: a rugby player at Trinity College Dublin connects with a trans woman during a student party, and, after the bash is broken up, they chat the night away. Adam Lunnon-Collery is charming as Jace the jock. Liath Hannon is alternately fragile and assertive as the uncertain Charlie. Comparisons with Richard Linklater's Before ... films are unavoidable, but this beguiling film works wonders with its contemporary variation on (hearty) Montagues and (arty) Capulets. it just about gets away with the sort of unlikely mid-story reversal you'd expect from a 19th-century sensation novel. Seek it out on release. If Gilmore, making his debut, counts as a young gun, Liam Ó Mochain – if he'll forgive me – counts as a festival veteran. The independent-minded director returns with a characteristically humane anthology picture titled Abode. Wearing varying hair on head and face, he turns up in five stories focused on the theme of home. There is a sentimental Christmas yarn in which homeless folk take over a restaurant. In another, an older woman prepares to meet the son she has never known. The closing piece – somewhat surprisingly – looks to have escaped from Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror. Speaking of veterans, Jim Sheridan, the Oscar-nominated director of My Left Foot and The Field, opened this year's event with the ambitious, head-scratchy Re-creation. Sheridan imagines what might have happened if journalist Ian Bailey had faced trial for the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan Du Plantier in west Cork. This fraught chamber piece, unmistakably modelled on Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men, follows the European jury as they chew over the evidence. Sheridan is the foreman. Vicky Krieps, the only one who initially thinks the defendant not guilty, takes over the Henry Fonda role from the Lumet film. Anyone who has seen Murder at the Cottage, Sheridan's sceptical documentary series on the Toscan Du Plantier case, (or who has seen 12 Angry Men, for that matter) will be unsurprised that the rest of the jury is gradually won over to Krieps's view. John Connors has a good role as a belligerent 'string him up' juror who looks to be processing past trauma. Space precludes any meaningful analysis of the trawl through swathes of contradictory evidence, but Sheridan is to be credited for his dedication to the task. Unfortunately, his character in the film shifts too jarringly from considered fence-sitter to relentless advocate for a not-guilty verdict (if not Bailey's innocence). And the film, co-written with David Merriman, can't quite find a life for itself outside its didactic purpose. A singular oddity, nonetheless. AWARDS PRESENTED at the 37th edition of the GALWAY FILM FLEADH Best Irish Film with Element Pictures CHRISTY Director: Brendan Canty Audience Award TRAD Director/Writer/Producer: Lance Daly Best Irish First Feature HORSESHOE Directors: Edwin Mullane and Adam O'Keeffe Best Irish Feature Documentary with Danú Media SANATORIUM Director: Gar O'Rourke Best Independent Irish Film with Moore Ireland (Joint winners) SOLITARY Director/Writer: Eamonn Murphy and GIRLS & BOYS Director/Writer: Donncha Gilmore World Cinema Competition WINTER IN SOKCHO Director: Koya Kamura Best International Film DRAGONFLY Director/Writer: Paul Andrew Williams Best International Documentary GERRY ADAMS – A BALLYMURPHY MAN Director/Writer: Trisha Ziff Best Irish Language Feature Film BÁITE Director: Ruán Magan Best International Short Animation LUZ DIABLA Directors/Writers: Patricio Plaza, Paula Boffo and Gervasio Canda Joe McMahon Award for Best International Short Drama/Fiction HEAT ME Director: Kelly Sari Best International Short Documentary (Joint winners) THE MIRACLE OF LIFE Director/Writer/Producer: Sabrine Khoury WE WERE THE SCENERY Director: Christopher Radcliff Best First Short Animation Award with Brown Bag Films ONE TRACK MIND Director/Writer/Animator: Faye Isherwood-Wallace James Flynn Award for Best First Short Drama INTERNAL BLEEDING Director/Writer: Zoë Nolan Donal Gilligan Award for Best Cinematography in a Short Film with the Irish Society Cinematographers (ISC) THE AXE FORGETS Cinematographer: Naoise Kettle Peripheral Visions Award VITRIVAL – THE MOST BEAUTIFUL VILLAGE IN THE WORLD Directors/Writers: Noëlle Bastin, Baptiste Bogaert Generation Jury Award: WHERE THE WIND COMES FROM Director/Writer: Amel Guellaty Best International Independent Film Award ADULT CHILDREN Director: Rich Newey Best Cinematography in an Irish Film with Teach Solais LISTEN TO THE LAND SPEAK Cinematographer: Michael O'Donovan The Pitching Award with Wild Atlantic Pictures The Body + Blood Carol Murphy Bingham Ray New Talent Award with Magnolia Pictures Jessica Reynolds: Actress – THE WOLF THE FOX & THE LEOPARD James Horgan Award for Best Animation Short with Animation Ireland ÉIRU Director: Giovanna Ferrari Best Short Documentary Award with TG4 DRAGON'S TEETH Director/Writer: Lennart Soberon Tiernan McBride Award for Best Short Drama / (Best Fiction Short) THREE KEENINGS Director/Writer: Oliver McGoldrick
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Galway Film Fleadh 2025 confirms reputation as prime spot to premiere Irish feature
We can safely assume it was mere accident that Trisha Ziff's Gerry Adams : A Ballymurphy Man arrived at the 37th Galway Film Fleadh on The Twelfth (of July that is). Such a prominent release was always going to land a Saturday-evening premiere. Nonetheless, there was a pretty irony in Adams escaping the marchers to be lauded in blistering Galway sunshine. As we sweated in the square outside the Town Hall Theatre, the grizzled republican paused for more selfies than came the way of any attending star. Few could reasonably deny that Ziff's film is a sympathetic work. We begin with Adams using a hurley to propel balls into the sea for his pet dogs and then settle in to hear him – comfy in an armchair – talk us through his version of an undeniably extraordinary life. Ziff, an English film-maker who lives and works in Mexico, allows the word 'activist' to do a lot of heavy lifting. 'The words '60 years of activism' act as subtitle. He ponders a return to 'activism' after being released from prison. The film's vagueness about the nature of this activism in the 1970s is sure to raise some hackles, but Adams's gifts as a grimly amusing storyteller maintain attention through a hefty running time. His description of intimidated Catholics arriving as refugees to Ballymurphy in the 1960s is moving and enraging. His analysis of a shift from passive acceptance in the nationalist community is convincing. Ziff leaves it until the closing moments to address the bandoliered elephant in the room. 'I have never disassociated myself from the IRA,' Adams doesn't quite clarify. READ MORE [ Poignant documentary about Sunny Jacobs to be aired at Galway Film Fleadh Opens in new window ] Adams and Ziff took the stage after the world premiere to discuss a well-made film stuffed with fascinating archival footage. Adams, asked why he agreed to the project, noted he was 'persuaded it would be helpful, because most of the stuff that's been done about me is a hatchet job'. Probed about recent experiences, he seemed to make oblique reference to the TV series Say Nothing, which represented him in controversial fashion. 'I don't have the words to actually explain the strange experience of seeing someone pretending to be you,' he said cryptically. Gerry Adams: A Ballymurphy Man took the Fleadh's prize for best international documentary. Elsewhere, the hottest Fleadh in memory – gone are the days of paddling up Shop Street in monsoon floods – confirmed its reputation as the prime spot to premiere Irish features. There were, indeed, more domestic openings than any one person could digest. A fascinating complement to the Gerry Adams film arrived in the form of Trevor Birney's The Negotiator. Also very much on its subject's side, the film offered a warm and deeply researched portrait of Senator George Mitchell from beginnings as an Irish-American boy adopted by inspirational, working-class Lebanese-Americans and on to the army, to the law, to politics, back to the law again and back to politics. The temptation would be to focus acutely on his time as negotiator during the talks that led up the Belfast Agreement. There is plenty on that topic. But Birney gives at least as much time to the rest of a busy, varied career. The Fleadh has long celebrated the Irish documentary. Other true stories attracting attention this year included Mieke Vanmechelen and Michael Holly's beautifully made, elegantly edited, slightly baffling Immrám. The film goes among Siobhán de Paor, spoken word artist, and Diarmuid Lyng, former Wexford hurler, as they exercise beliefs derived from Celtic Christianity, closeness to the land and the eccentric philosophies of John Moriarty. Offering little gloss on their adventures, Immrám allows viewers to make up their own minds about the virtues of incanting prayers while wearing a fox's head. It has a tremendous, sometimes abrasive score by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh. Frank Shouldice told us a touching story about raging against the light in Once We Were Punks. Deep into middle-age, the former members of The Panic Merchants, a Cavan-based post-punk band, come together for one more gig at Whelan's in Dublin. The film, which sold out its Fleadh premiere in no time, takes in fascinating personal stories – Justin Kelly, lead singer, is the son of Captain James Kelly, found not guilty in the 1970 Arms Trial – as it stomps towards stirring affirmation. Few documentaries this year were more bewitching than Nuala O'Connor's lovely, monochrome Dónal Lunny: In Time. The musician meditates wisely on a hugely influential career as colleagues such as Christy Moore and Andy Irvine drop in to remind us of the wild times that accompanied the rise of Planxty and The Bothy Band. There is a wintry sadness to a film that, along with a celebration of the good years, touches on tragedy such as the recent death of Lunny's son, Shane. In Time was cleverly scheduled right before the world premiere of Lance Daly's careering, joyful drama Trad. Megan Nic Fhionnghaile, virtuoso fiddler, takes her first acting role as a traditional player who, divided about the music, flees her Donegal home with an eccentric troupe headed by Aidan Gillen's mad hatter. 'I've never even done a play in school,' the brilliant Nic Fhionnghaile told me. After the screening, Daly, director of Black 47 and Kisses, praised Gillen, whose participation came to the film's rescue after initial financing proved difficult. Daly also brought his admirable dog Basil, costar of Trad, on to the stage. The ecstatic response at the Town Hall on Friday night suggested we had a crowd-pleaser, and, sure enough, Trad took this year's audience prize. After winning Grand Prix in the Generation 14plus section at the Berlin Film Festival last winter, Brendan Canty's fine social-realist drama Christy received its Irish premiere by the Corrib. Daniel Power stars as the title character, a young man who reconnects with his half-brother after teenage years in care. Power plumbs Christy's frailties as he is buffeted about contemporary Cork in a film that revels in compassion for the excluded. Diarmaid Noyes is equally strong as the sibling with whom he has issues that may defy resolution. It is a loose-limbed film with a fine sense of place. The team can add the Fleadh's award for best Irish film to their gong at Berlin. Last year's winner, Kneecap, built on that platform with notable success. Girls & Boys, a nifty romantic drama from Donncha Gilmore, happens upon a neat, fecund scenario: a rugby player at Trinity College Dublin connects with a trans woman during a student party, and, after the bash is broken up, they chat the night away. Adam Lunnon-Collery is charming as Jace the jock. Liath Hannon is alternately fragile and assertive as the uncertain Charlie. Comparisons with Richard Linklater's Before ... films are unavoidable, but this beguiling film works wonders with its contemporary variation on (hearty) Montagues and (arty) Capulets. it just about gets away with the sort of unlikely mid-story reversal you'd expect from a 19th-century sensation novel. Seek it out on release. If Gilmore, making his debut, counts as a young gun, Liam Ó Mochain – if he'll forgive me – counts as a festival veteran. The independent-minded director returns with a characteristically humane anthology picture titled Abode. Wearing varying hair on head and face, he turns up in five stories focused on the theme of home. There is a sentimental Christmas yarn in which homeless folk take over a restaurant. In another, an older woman prepares to meet the son she has never known. The closing piece – somewhat surprisingly – looks to have escaped from Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror. Speaking of veterans, Jim Sheridan, the Oscar-nominated director of My Left Foot and The Field, opened this year's event with the ambitious, head-scratchy Re-creation. Sheridan imagines what might have happened if journalist Ian Bailey had faced trial for the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan Du Plantier in west Cork. This fraught chamber piece, unmistakably modelled on Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men, follows the European jury as they chew over the evidence. Sheridan is the foreman. Vicky Krieps, the only one who initially thinks the defendant not guilty, takes over the Henry Fonda role from the Lumet film. Anyone who has seen Murder at the Cottage, Sheridan's sceptical documentary series on the Toscan Du Plantier case, (or who has seen 12 Angry Men, for that matter) will be unsurprised that the rest of the jury is gradually won over to Krieps's view. John Connors has a good role as a belligerent 'string him up' juror who looks to be processing past trauma. Space precludes any meaningful analysis of the trawl through swathes of contradictory evidence, but Sheridan is to be credited for his dedication to the task. Unfortunately, his character in the film shifts too jarringly from considered fence-sitter to relentless advocate for a not-guilty verdict (if not Bailey's innocence). And the film, co-written with David Merriman, can't quite find a life for itself outside its didactic purpose. A singular oddity, nonetheless. AWARDS PRESENTED at the 37th edition of the GALWAY FILM FLEADH Best Irish Film with Element Pictures CHRISTY Director: Brendan Canty Audience Award TRAD Director/Writer/Producer: Lance Daly Best Irish First Feature HORSESHOE Directors: Edwin Mullane and Adam O'Keeffe Best Irish Feature Documentary with Danú Media SANATORIUM Director: Gar O'Rourke Best Independent Irish Film with Moore Ireland (Joint winners) SOLITARY Director/Writer: Eamonn Murphy and GIRLS & BOYS Director/Writer: Donncha Gilmore World Cinema Competition WINTER IN SOKCHO Director: Koya Kamura Best International Film DRAGONFLY Director/Writer: Paul Andrew Williams Best International Documentary GERRY ADAMS – A BALLYMURPHY MAN Director/Writer: Trisha Ziff Best Irish Language Feature Film BÁITE Director: Ruán Magan Best International Short Animation LUZ DIABLA Directors/Writers: Patricio Plaza, Paula Boffo and Gervasio Canda Joe McMahon Award for Best International Short Drama/Fiction HEAT ME Director: Kelly Sari Best International Short Documentary (Joint winners) THE MIRACLE OF LIFE Director/Writer/Producer: Sabrine Khoury WE WERE THE SCENERY Director: Christopher Radcliff Best First Short Animation Award with Brown Bag Films ONE TRACK MIND Director/Writer/Animator: Faye Isherwood-Wallace James Flynn Award for Best First Short Drama INTERNAL BLEEDING Director/Writer: Zoë Nolan Donal Gilligan Award for Best Cinematography in a Short Film with the Irish Society Cinematographers (ISC) THE AXE FORGETS Cinematographer: Naoise Kettle Peripheral Visions Award VITRIVAL – THE MOST BEAUTIFUL VILLAGE IN THE WORLD Directors/Writers: Noëlle Bastin, Baptiste Bogaert Generation Jury Award: WHERE THE WIND COMES FROM Director/Writer: Amel Guellaty Best International Independent Film Award ADULT CHILDREN Director: Rich Newey Best Cinematography in an Irish Film with Teach Solais LISTEN TO THE LAND SPEAK Cinematographer: Michael O'Donovan The Pitching Award with Wild Atlantic Pictures The Body + Blood Carol Murphy Bingham Ray New Talent Award with Magnolia Pictures Jessica Reynolds: Actress – THE WOLF THE FOX & THE LEOPARD James Horgan Award for Best Animation Short with Animation Ireland ÉIRU Director: Giovanna Ferrari Best Short Documentary Award with TG4 DRAGON'S TEETH Director/Writer: Lennart Soberon Tiernan McBride Award for Best Short Drama / (Best Fiction Short) THREE KEENINGS Director/Writer: Oliver McGoldrick
Irish Independent
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Independent
Taoiseach Micheál Martin urges calm after Fianna Fáil TD says British Army never shot Irish civilians
He was reacting to the claim by one of his own backbenchers, Cathal Crowe of Co Clare, that British Army troops never shot any civilians in Ireland – for which he has since apologised. But Mr Martin, who revealed Mr Crowe contacted him to express his regret at embarrassing the Fianna Fáil party, said people should 'calm down'. Commenting at the Bloom festival, Mr Martin said there has been 'a bit of an over-the-top reaction', in response to Mr Crowe's absolution for the British Army. 'We don't need any lessons in terms of Northern Ireland and the pain and the violence – and yes, the British state was responsible for Bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy, and much, much more,' Mr Martin said. 'I think he was talking in the context of Gaza. Thank God that Gaza never happened in Northern Ireland to the same extent, although one person killed is one person too many. 'As far as I'm concerned, there was horrendous violence in Northern Ireland perpetrated by the State and by the Provisional IRA and by Loyalists like the Glenanne gang. 'There were reprehensible murders, and shocking bombings like Enniskillen, Birmingham, the Dublin-Monaghan bombing, Belturbet, and right across Britain. 'A lot of innocent people were murdered and slaughtered by the IRA. People in Derry and in Ballymurphy were murdered by the British army. We resolved that through a peace process and through reconciliation. 'When I spoke with [US] president [Donald] Trump, and he referred back to the viciousness of what went on in Ireland over 30 years, I made the point to him: We managed to build a peace out of all that vicious violence. 'Peace can work, and the same needs to happen in the Middle East.' Mr Martin said Mr Crowe had been anxious to correct his remarks after speaking 'off the cuff'. 'Cathal Crowe is a very solid TD and doesn't need to be reprimanded. I think people need to be careful about overreacting here. 'We have a peace process in Ireland that is sustained, and we are at peace with Britain. I'm building reconciliation in Northern Ireland through the Shared Island programme, so there's no need to be re-fighting old wars.'
Irish Examiner
29-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Fianna Fáil TD apologises for inaccurate Dáil claim about British army actions in Ireland
A Fianna Fáil TD has apologised for claiming in the Dáil yesterday that no British soldiers had ever shot or bombed the civilian population of Ireland. Clare TD Cathal Crowe has formally corrected the Dáil record over his comments after significant criticism was levelled against him. During a speech in the Dáil on Wednesday on Gaza, Mr Crowe said the ongoing bombardment of Gaza and withholding of aid is the 'worst we have seen in our lifetime.' Mr Crowe then compared the actions of the Israeli Government to the actions of the British army in Ireland. 'The British army was a bad actor on this island for many centuries but even in the worst of days, when its cities were being bombed by the terror organisations of the IRA, it never retaliated by bombing and shooting the civilian population of Ireland,' Mr Crowe said. His comments were seized upon by Sinn Féin, with the party's Gaeltacht spokesperson Aengus Ó Snodaigh describing Mr Crowe's speech 'as appalling as it is untrue.' 'In his attempt to rewrite history, Teachta Crowe is erasing the countless victims of British state violence in Ireland, North and South, victims and families who continue to fight for justice to this day,' Mr Ó Snodaigh said. 'The conflict in the North of Ireland was defined by the brutal murder of civilians by the British army, from the Ballymurphy massacre to Bloody Sunday, not to mention when prisoners at Long Kesh were subjected to bombing with CR gas.' Mr Ó Snodaigh particularly highlighted the case of Seán Brown, a GAA official who was shot dead in 1997 by loyalist paramilitaries, calling for Mr Crowe to take up advocacy for his family and 'demand justice' rather than 'erasing their truth.' He called for Mr Crowe to make a full apology for his 'vicious lie' and formally correct the Dáil record. In his apology, Mr Crowe told the Dáil that he wanted to correct the official record and to 'apologise profusely to anyone that may have been offended by my comments.' Mr Crowe said he made his speech without a script and was speaking from a list of bullet points. 'I began by stating that the Israeli eye for an eye approach has been reprehensible and that the bombing of hospitals, schools and tents alongside the killing of babies, including many new newborn babies in hospitals, amounts to genocide and ethnic cleansing. 'I then wanted to make the point that brutal, bad and all as the British armed forces have been on this island for a very long time, they never resorted to sending over the Royal Air Force, tanks and missiles to pummel Irish cities.' Mr Crowe said he wanted to convey the 'huge disproportionality' in Israel's response to Gaza since the October 7 attack. He added that he had 'clumsily and wrongly stated' that British forces had never bombed or shot Irish civilians. 'Let me be very clear, it was not my intention to say this, and I didn't realise how woeful all of that sounded until late last night when I received the transcript of what I had actually said,' Mr Crowe said. He added that it was a 'genuine slip-up' but still wrong, and he apologised 'profusely' and 'unequivocally.' Read More Independent TDs vote against Government to back Sinn Féin bill on Israeli government bonds
