‘A life packed with love and action’

MANY seek it, most don’t have it, but Caolan Mulrooney had the X-factor.

So said his father, Eugene, in a spirited, heartfelt and heartbreaking tribute to his son who lived an “action-packed 18 years”.

Caolan, a UCC engineering student from Rochestown, Cork, was laid to rest yesterday, a week after he went missing after a night out with friends.

His disappearance prompted one of the largest co-ordinated searches ever to take place in Cork City, involving gardaí, the coastguard, navy divers, river rescue teams and hundreds of Caolan’s friends and student colleagues.

His body was found just before 10am on Tuesday off Douglas St.

Yesterday, school and college pals, team mates and close friends gathered to help console his parents Eugene and Margaret, and siblings Odhrán, Éanna, Muiréad and Seosaí.

The ceremony featured poignant music co-ordinated by Caolan’s uncle, John Mulrooney from Galway, and as the Mass began, other family members brought gifts of books, a guitar and a football jersey to the altar, where the coffin was adorned with a GAA flag and a picture of Caolan.

Speaking to the congregation after a moving ceremony, Mr Mulrooney said his son was considerate, intelligent, loving, patient, kind and mischievous and had lived his life to the full.

“He loved where he was from and who he was. We treasure the 18 years of memories we have.”

He told packed church that Caolan loved the comforts of home and operated in his “own time and world”.

The third-born son had arrived two weeks late and was the heaviest of their five children. When he was just six, Caolan showed his single-mindedness by heading home alone from football training and climbing in a window of the locked house before settling down to watch television.

“At home any effort to persuade him to enter our time zone was replied with ‘the Caolan smirk’ and he would say ‘hey Eug, chill’.”

His father went on to thank the “excellent teachers” who shaped his son’s early education and the many friends he made at St Columba’s National School — friends who would be with him to his last day — and the “hugely influential” role the Christian Brothers College played in his son’s life.

He thanked the gardaí and emergency services for their professionalism and consideration, which he said would be “of great comfort as we go forward”.

In a particularly emotional tribute he said he and his wife could never repay the “the people of Cork”.

“The goodwill and emotion was of massive support to us and we truly overwhelmed with the release of the spirit of Cork. It is truly remarkable to experience something so freely expressed from the heart — its strength and power can be the crutch for all of us to lean on.”

Coalan’s mother Margaret read a short poem and simply said “love you always Caolan”. The men of the family then carried Caolan’s coffin down the aisle, to begin his last journey to St John’s Cemetery in Ballinrea.