Clare parade organiser apologises to family of Carlow pensioner over 'tone deaf' float
Peader Doyle, 66, from Pollerton, Co Carlow, passed away on Friday, January 21, and gardaí believe the pensioner was already dead when he was taken into his nearby post office. Picture: Denis Minihane.
The organisers of a St Patrick’s Day parade have written to relatives of Carlow pensioner Peader Doyle to apologise for the "tone deaf" entry that depicted his death.
The St Patrick’s Day parade at Kilfenora was one of two parades that depicted dead pensioner Peader Doyle being brought to a Carlow town post office in an alleged attempt to claim his pension.
Mr Doyle, 66, from Pollerton, Co Carlow, passed away on Friday, January 21, and gardaí believe the pensioner was already dead when he was taken into his nearby post office, although a postmortem has determined there was no foul play in the death itself.
In an interview with Alan Morrissey on Clare FM’s ,co-organiser of the annual parade staged in the Burren village of Kilfenora Orla Vaughan said: “First and foremost to Noeleen, Peader’s sister and Liam and Christopher, Peader’s brothers-in-law, I really, really apologise because I can understand the hurt it has caused them over the last few days.”
Ms Vaughan said “to bring back difficult times for them after the death of their brother and brother in law is terrible”.
The other parade which depicted the post office incident was at Belmullet Festival, Co Mayo.
Ms Vaughan said she and a co-organiser of the annual St Patrick’s Day parade sent a card on Monday apologising to Mr Doyle’s relatives.
She added she understood why there had been such a furore over the entry.
She said: “It is absolutely no consolation to Noeleen and her family that we are now all sitting here now down-stricken looking ‘God, I am so sorry, that was tone deaf of us, we shouldn’t have done that’.”
Ms Vaughan said: “I have apologised in writing and I am apologising now and I would like to speak [to them] directly.
“I do know there is a family behind this who are still grieving the death and what followed from that.”
She said: “We are 25 years doing the parade. We are a very small village and we are in competition with a lot of large towns around and the criteria is ‘please turn up with a float’.”
She said: “There is no vetting of floats and no looking at floats before they take off in a parade. To be honest, I wasn’t aware of the float until it was coming back down the village.”
Ms Vaughan said the parade would have to look into vetting for future events after what had occurred.
She said: “This has caused a lot of hurt to Peadar’s family and especially, I can’t imagine, what Noeleen is going through.”
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