FAILED BY SOCIETY

THE text message from Adrian Dunne’s mobile phone the morning he wiped out his family was almost tender in its simplicity.

“Ciara and Aidran are so very sorry,” it said, its misspellings uncorrected before the ‘send’ button was pressed. “We nott going to Livepol,” it continued, referring to the couple’s almost certainly fanciful notions of starting a new life in Liverpool. “Instad we pick heaven. Please for give.”

But it was a perverse tenderness that characterised the scene when gardaí forced their way into the Dunne family home and found two little girls, Leanne, a fortnight shy of her fifth birthday, and Shania, just three and a half, lying toe-to-toe on the sofa, covered by a duvet and holding their favourite Dora the Explorer dollies, the way they were arranged after their father suffocated them.