Poignant tributes as tragic Ryan laid to rest

IT must have been not only tragic but bewildering for the grandparents of Ryan O’Dwyer Hayes, the five- year-old boy killed with his aunt, Helena, in Cork at the weekend and buried yesterday at St Michael’s cemetery in Mahon.

Of the hundreds who attended the funeral Mass of the little schoolboy, theirs was a particularly heavy burden. “There is something particularly cruel in being asked to bury your grandchild,” whispered a mourner as Ryan’s Granny O’Dwyer lit the funeral candle from her grandchild’s baptismal candle.

She was among more than 200 mourners for his funeral Mass in the Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne, better known locally as the North Chapel and barely a stone’s throw from Ryan’s home in Hollyhill.