Toll grows as murder-suicide comes out of shadows

IRISH society is having to face a growing litany of parents who murder their own children before deciding to escape this life by suicide themselves.

And the Irish Association of Suicidology said murder-suicide is more common than people think and has traditionally gone unreported.

One of the first such tragedies known to have occurred was in Co Wexford in September 2000 when Kilkenny father Stephen Byrne, 41, drove the family car off a pier in Duncannon, drowning himself and his two sons, Alan, 10, and Shane, 6.