Irish Examiner View: Five families bereaved in an instant

Chloe McGee, age 23 years, Carickmacross; Alan McCluskey, age 23 years, Drumconrath; Dylan Commins, age 23 years, Ardee; Shay Duffy, age 21 years, Carrickmacross; Chloe Hipson, age 21 years, Lanarkshire, Scotland.

The deaths of five young people — all in their early 20s — in Saturday night’s horror crash in Dundalk illustrated just how thin the margin is between life and death on our roads. Tributes are paid in these pages today to those who died.

The heartbreaking loss of their lives brought to 157 the number of people killed on Irish roads so far in 2025 — 10 more than at the same point last year — and highlighted once more how circumstances can change in a split second from joyous anticipation to pure horror.

They were on their way out for a night of fun like so many other similar young groups of friends all over the country last weekend.

Their deaths cast a pall over their home places — the villages of Carrickmacross in Co Monaghan, Drumconrath in Co Louth, and Lanarkshire in Scotland.

Padraig McGovern, the principal of Ó Fiaich College, Dundalk, where Chloe Magee was a teacher, spoke poignantly of the sudden absence a tragic death leaves in a wider community when he said: “To think that we’re going to school today and she won’t be there is an incredible shock.”

It’s this sudden, shocking absence that communities, friends, and families seek to soothe. They know they cannot fill that awful void, but do their utmost to stand with the bereaved family in their grief.

One can only hope that the five families grieving the loss of these deeply missed young people today — Shay Duffy, Alan McCluskey, Dylan Commins, Chloe Hipson, and Chloe Magee — gain some comfort from that support.

World Cup qualifiers: Football heroes let us dream

Ireland's Troy Parrott and Séamus Coleman celebrate. Picture: INPHO/Ryan Byrne

We are often accused of getting wildly over-expectant when it comes to the potential for our sporting stars to excel in any given arena.

We saw it during the last Rugby World Cup when the nation was gripped with the expectation that we could actually win the thing only to see — through bitter tears — New Zealand puncture those hopes cruelly in Paris.

So too it has been with our football teams down the years. When Jack Charlton’s doughty men finally broke a long-standing glass ceiling by qualifying for the finals of a major championship at the 1988 Euros in Germany, the nation nearly stopped functioning.

And when they topped that by qualifying for the Italia ’90 World Cup, the whole country lost the run of itself completely before losing 1-0 in a quarter-final to the hosts on a bittersweet night in Rome.

Stories of credit union managers being overwhelmed by loan requests from financially straitened fans determined to follow the Green Army to wherever Jack led them became legend.

So too it was at USA ’94 and the ill-fated trip to the World Cup jointly hosted by Japan and South Korea in 2002, the events surrounding which have subsequently been turned into the movie Saipan.

And in 2023, following near miss after near miss, the Girls in Green got in on the act. Led by Vera Pauw and driven on by stars such as Denise O’Sullivan and Katie McCabe, they qualified to play on their greatest stage in Australia.

But nobody here could have predicted what happened in the past week as Heimir Hallgrímsson’s stuttering squad faced two games they had to win to secure a place in the play-offs for next summer’s World Cup which is being hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico.

Expectations that they could achieve just that were minimal, but five goals from Troy Parrott in Dublin last Thursday and Budapest on Sunday blew the national pessimism out of the water and sent us into Thursday’s play-off draw in Zurich in a state of near disbelief.

A two-game rubber next March will actually decide whether or not we get to take part in the next World Cup but already plans to travel are being formulated and teased out by many.

Yes, we have to try not to get ahead of ourselves, but once more we can dare to dream. 

 

Epstein files: Mystery over Trump’s U-turn

US president Donald Trump speaks to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, November 14. Picture: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

In fairness to Donald Trump, one accusation that could never be levelled at him is that he’s predictable.

Just when White House observers the world over had reached the conclusion that the US president would do just about anything to prevent the publication of the so-called Epstein files, he pulls a volte-face and tells his Republican colleagues in Congress to vote for a measure compelling the Department of Justice to release them.

After a lengthy campaign aimed at damping down growing calls from within the GOP to release the investigators’ files on convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Trump changed tack on Sunday night and encouraged them to vote to have the material made public.

After years of trying to obfuscate and muddy the picture with regard to his personal relationship with the sex offender, Trump’s switcheroo bamboozled critics and supporters alike — especially after he spent days personally trying to sway Republican lawmakers from forcing a vote.

A document dump last week fuelled the political firestorm facing the US president because of his associations with Epstein.

We must wait and see whether the vote in Congress that takes place this week will clarify the rationale behind his apparent U-turn.