Family fire deaths - Tragedy for Ireland as a community

SIGNIFICANT questions concerning the problems increasingly besetting Irish society today are again raised by yet another tragedy in a rural community, another senseless act of violence with all the hallmarks of a murder-suicide atrocity, another appalling series of events that have seen yet another young family wiped out.

It is easy to understand and empathise with the sense of numbness gripping the people of Clonroche in the Co Wexford village where the community is literally reeling with shock and horror at the violent incidents that occurred in their midst. But what people will find it hard to come to grips with is how any person could descend into such a spiral of madness as to kill those nearest and dearest to them.

Judging by the mounting evidence at the scene that is what happened during the hours of darkness last Friday night and early Saturday morning in the sleeping village. Reports that petrol had been spread on the ground floor and used as an accelerant in the fire are being investigated by the gardaí.

Nobody was aware of the grim happenings taking place in the home of a family that bore all the trappings of success in modern Ireland. By the time the alarm was raised it was too late.

How could anyone imagine that 41-year-old Dermot Flood, local businessman, pillar of the community, well liked and a popular member of the GAA, was apparently in the act of killing his beautiful 38-year-old wife Lorraine, cutting off the lives of their children, six-year-old Mark and five-year-old Julie, by setting fire to the family home, and then taking his own life by turning a shotgun on himself?

Local rumours suggest he may have been suffering from stress. As families up and down the country can testify, all too often stress and depression can lead to suicide. Indeed, more people take their own lives in Ireland than die on our roads. So widespread is this tragic problem that more than 600 Irish people resort to suicide every year, more than half of them men under 25. But whenever a person turns to murder and then suicide, such an appalling scenario defies reason and is hard to rationalise. It can only be put down to a moment of sheer insanity.

Wexford has experienced more than its share of murder-suicide tragedies of this kind. The horrific events of the weekend come only three days after the anniversary of another family just a few miles away, a mother and two young children, were wiped out last year by a crazed father who also took his own life.

As local priest Fr Richard Redmond put it, the extended families of the victims of the latest tragedy will find support and sympathy from what he described as “a community of faith that is not without hope”.

The key question, however — as to where Irish society is going wrong — must be addressed. In this sad case, whether the answer lies in personal, financial or business pressures will emerge in time. But what is absolutely clear is that something is gravely wrong with Irish society today.