MOURNERS TOLD GARDA KILLER ‘A MAN OF HOPE’
Provo thug buried after priest hails him as an ‘educator and philosopher’
THE funeral of IRA garda Pearse Mcauley took yesterday.
Mcauley, who was imprisoned for the killing Detective Garda Jerry Mccabe and a brutal assault on his former wife Pauline Tully, was found dead at his home in Strabane, Co Tyrone, on Monday.
He was buried in Strabane Cemetery following a mass at the Church of the Immaculate Conception yesterday morning.
Rev Declan Boland told the congregation: “The sense of suffering, emptiness and pain that death brings to those who are left behind to mourn is a heavy burden to bear, and this family bears it this morning.”
During the eulogy, mourners were told that the Pearse Mcauley known to his family and friends was very different from the man depicted in the media.
Rev Boland said: “It was a side so far removed from what was documented and reported.
“In essence, Pearse was an educator, a philosopher, and a deeply sincere man of hope.
killer place
To those who knew you best, they will miss you most.”
Mcauley is survived by his sons Pearse and Eoghain, his partner Mary, and his siblings Nancy, Siobhan, Patricia and Micheal.
He was predeceased by his parents Pearse and Sheila, and his siblings Fionnuala, Thomas, Seamus and Maura.
Mcauley escaped from Brixton Prison in London in 1991 while awaiting trial on charges related to a suspected plot to assassinate Charles Tidbury, who was a brewing executive.
He then made his way to Ireland and was a member of an IRA gang that attempted an armed robbery of a post office van in Adare in 1996 – four months after the IRA’S 17-month ceasfire had ended with the massive London Docklands bomb that killed two people.
Mcauley was convicted of killing Detective Garda Mccabe during that attempted robbery in Adare, Co Limerick.
In 1999, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the manslaughter of the married father-of-five. He served 10-and-a-half years and was released from
prison in 2009.
*THE Government is prone to boast about providing free medical cards to those over 70 but they fail to inform the public there is still a strict means test.
I’ve just discovered I’m ineligible for such a card because I earn a few euro above the limit.
No such means tests for Ukrainian refugees who are automatically provided with free medical cards as are the thousands of asylum seekers arriving in the country, even the ones without passports or travel documents.
When there is such medical care inequality between Irish people who have worked all their lives and those who never paid a cent in tax here, is it any wonder an increasingly angry public feel they are being treated like secondclass citizens in their own country?