Priest hits at failure to tackle Belfast despair

The despair driving young people to suicide has been ignored amid the push to turn Belfast into a centre of prosperity, a priest claimed today.

As hundreds gathered for the funeral of a teenager who hanged herself at her boyfriend’s graveside, Father Stephen Rooney launched a blistering attack on the authorities’ failure to deal with the crisis.

He told mourners: “They are trying to tell us it’s a place of hope, but they drove us to hopelessness and deprived us of hope.

“Now, by a click of their fingers, they expect, by putting more money in our pockets, overnight we are supposed to have this great sense of hope. They took it from us and it’s going to be a long time before we can get it back.”

Fr Rooney delivered his scathing assessment as he paid tribute to Fiona Barnes, the 18-year-old from West Belfast who took her own life at the weekend.

She was found by a passer-by close to where her partner Michael McComb, 19, was buried after committing suicide in May.

With his death believed to be linked to the tragic killing of his younger sister in a joyriding accident two years ago, Fiona’s parents Aidan and Maura believe she died of a broken heart.

As relatives, neighbours and friends in the tight-knit Ballymurphy district packed into the Church of the Annunciation, they heard Father Rooney – a family cousin who flew in from Detroit to take the service – describe her death as “complicated”.

Although he accepted that her loved ones would question what they could have done to prevent it, the priest insisted they were all helpless.

Her death, which raised new fears of a fresh suicide cluster after 13 young people killed themselves in north Belfast at the start of the year, was symptomatic of a hopelessness among those who feel there are no answers, Fr Rooney said.

He added: “Fiona, consumed with love and in despair, thought that there was only one way out.

“Our hope is not in any governmental structure that tells us: ’You were dirt for a long time but now you are all right. It was all right for you to live in shanties and not to have any voice in what’s going on, but now you have.’

“Our hope is not in any structure, our only hope is in Jesus Christ.”

Earlier crowds gathered outside the Barnes home as Fiona’s coffin was taken out for funeral mass.

A flatbed lorry laden with wreaths travelled with the cortege which, at one point, passed the spot where 15-year-old Debbie McComb was killed by a stolen car in March 2002.

Her mother, Mary, helped carry the coffin as friends comforted the dead girl’s parents and her three sisters, Hannah, Louise and Nicola.

West Belfast MP and Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams was among mourners who then made their way to the City Cemetery for burial in a plot close to where Fiona’s boyfriend was buried.