Priest who gave last rites ‘will never forget’ scene

THE priest who said prayers over murdered farmer Finbar Fahy has said he will “never forget the scene that I have witnessed when I administered the last rites”.

The village of Ardrahan in Co Galway has been left “shattered” following the brutal murder of a popular retired farmer.

The body of 77-year-old Finbar Fahy was discovered in his house by his son Aidan in Ballinduff, Ardrahan, Co Galway, on Wednesday morning.

Postmortem results showed Mr Fahy died from blunt-force trauma to the head and gardaí believe he may have been the victim of a robbery.

Speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday, local parish priest Fr Richard Higgins said the community was in shock.

“It’s unreal. The people here are shattered. They’re shattered that this should happen here. Never before has anything like this happened here and we have had our tragedies in the parish.

“Something like this we can’t understand, why this has to happen, why people have to kill. Do they realise what they are doing to a family, to a parish and a community?

“ I will never forget the scene that I have witnessed when I administered the last rites. The devastation that they have caused. It’s just nonsensical, all for a few euro,” he said.

Fr Higgins said the retired farmer was a popular man and a familiar face in the parish.

“Well, he was a very prominent man in the neighbourhood in the sense that he was a character in a way and he was well-known. He was always on his bicycle. The shop was only a mile down the road and you could time him going to the shop in the morning and he would come back with the paper and a loaf and the milk and all that. That was his life.

“The people loved him. Every time he would go to the shop he would have the craic and a joke and the neighbours were fascinated with him too. They would love to hear the stories that he would have and jokes and everything like that,” he said.

Fr Higgins said Mr Fahy was an extremely active man for his age. “He wasn’t an ordinary 78-year-old. He was livelier than his age suggested and I have great visions of him myself. We have Mass here at 6pm. He would be here at about 5.30pm.

“He would light a few candles up at the altar. Then he would go off upstairs in the gallery and meet his pals there.

“Three or four of them would be there together and you would see him there with his friends on a Saturday night and them having the chat. They all loved him.”