Mick Clifford: Social media firms remain unshackled as abuse and anger overshadow sympathy and empathy

Tech companies continue to shape a world where people are free to make hateful comments about dead children, writes Mick Clifford

The funeral cortege for Joe Carthy, 15, one of the five teenagers who died in a motorway crash in Co Kildare last weekend.

Joe Carthy was 15. On the last day of his brief life he was involved in a terrible crime, or at least a venture that was criminal and ended with terrible consequences for an innocent family. And his own family. Just to state again, he was 15, physically, emotionally, developmentally and legally, a child.

He was the youngest of the five teenagers who were killed in the M9 crash in which a completely innocent family of four, including a seven-year-old boy, were badly injured. The primary and overwhelming sympathy in this tragedy must be extended to the innocent family whose lives have been shattered.