Parents appeal for ‘life to mean life’

SIOBHÁN HYNES’S parents have asked politicians to impose the harshest sentences on people like their daughter’s killer, the TG4 documentary reveals.

‘We would ask the State that someone who does something like this is put in prison for as long as they live,’ Siobhán’s father, Aindi Hynes, said.

In the programme, Siobhán’s mother Bríd recalls the last time she saw her daughter alive.

Siobhán had just turned 17 a week before the murder. Bríd remembers saying, ‘Be careful,’ to her.

‘They’re the last words I said to her,’ Bríd recalls.

When McDonagh was arrested and brought to trial, Bríd and Aindi found they couldn’t sit through the gruesome evidence and they had to leave the courtroom.

McDonagh was sentenced to life in prison in 2001, and in 2007 he was denied an appeal. He continues to serve his life sentence but could soon be released.