Byrne family still denied justice by ‘unforgiving state’

NEXT Sunday, a large family from the isolated Donegal peninsula of St John’s Point will gather for Mass to pray for the souls of Francis Byrne and his son Jimmy.

It will be the 29th anniversary of the night the two Byrnes and three fellow fishermen drowned when the Skifjord trawler sunk while sheltering from a storm.

Francis was aged 40. His son was 16. He left behind a wife and eight children who, as a result of that tragedy, became the repeated and unwitting adversaries of the state.