‘People lost, helpless and frightened’

THE parish priest of Cloughbawn yesterday said people were left lost, helpless and frightened by last weekend’s murder-suicide of a young local family.

Fr Richard Hayes told the funeral Mass for Diarmuid Flood, 41, his wife Lorraine, 38, and their two children Mark, 6, and Julie, 5, that the community felt angry and wanted to blame somebody.

However, he asked the 300 family members inside St Clement’s church and the hundreds more friends outside to understand what had happened was not the will of God.

“This is a very painful tragedy that involves the loss of life of small children: Mark and Julie; and their young parents Diarmuid and Lorraine.

“Let us be sensitive and caring to the bereaved families as we consider the rawness of their great loss, their vulnerability, their darkness and their pain,” he said.

One week ago today businessman Diarmuid shot himself and his wife and murdered his children. He also burned down the family home.

All week the village of Clonroche, where the family lived, fielded intense rumours about what had provoked the killings.

“We all come across things in life that are sad, very sad, but this is one which is almost impossible to comprehend. This is not the day or the place for speculation,” said Fr Roche.

Bishop of Ferns Dr Denis Brennan sent a separate message to the families and told them the entire diocese would pray for them.

The extended families of Diarmuid (the Floods) and Lorraine (the Kehoes) filled the small church and inter mingled with each other.

Afterwards they thanked the community for their support since the news of the Flood family deaths broke last Saturday.

The presence of four coffins and 14 priests stood out in what was otherwise a simple hour-long service.

Readings were done by family members and songs were sung by the parish choir –— which Lorraine used to be a part of. Pupils from Mark and Julie’s school accompanied the choir.

There was no offertory procession or symbolic gifts and only personal photographs identified which coffin was which.

There were just 12 wreaths around the coffins and everybody else was asked to make a donation to the depression charity Aware.

The vast majority of friends waited outside under the trees, where chairs had been arranged.

Sixty more people stood in the field alongside the burial plot in the adjoining cemetery where speakers were in place.

It was here at 3pm the bodies of the four-member Flood family were guided up to, and where they were laid to rest.