‘Thank you for not giving up on my husband’

The wife of a mine worker killed in an underground rockfall wept yesterday as she thanked the emergency services for ensuring her husband’s remains were recovered from the mine.

“Thank you for not giving up on him,” My-Ann Francis said at the funeral Mass for her husband Mario Francis, 49, who died while driving a loader truck in a mine shaft at Lisheen Mine near Moyne in Co Tipperary last Thursday.

Hundreds of local people, along with dozens from the Filipino community in Ireland, gathered at the Church of the Assumption in Mario’s adopted home town of Urlingford to celebrate the popular father’s life and say their final goodbyes.