‘I didn’t know he was dead. I was on floor with a pain in my chest’

Since the day she suffered a heart attack as her husband of 27 years bled to death outside their backdoor after he was gunned down, there has been one thing that kept Margaret Madden going — the fight for justice.

It has been the steel behind the long, legal battle which saw the mother-of-three firstly in the Special Criminal Court for the criminal trial of the men involved in her husband’s death. Yesterday in the High Court she secured more than €750,000 damages against the four men involved in her husband’s gunning down 13 years ago.

She might have made legal history, but Mrs Madden was only worried that she had done everything possible for the memory of her husband, Fás employee and part-time farmer, Terence Madden.