President Michael D Higgins has spoken of being very moved at the “best instincts and decency” of people in the aftermath of a “tragedy of this magnitude” in Creeslough, which killed 10 people.
After attending the final funeral of Robert Garwe and his five-year-old daughter Shauna on Saturday, President Higgins said it has been “an extraordinary week in so many ways.”
“First of all the great loss this community has suffered has many ways resonated not just throughout Ireland but to Irish people abroad,” he said
“The messages that have come have been very important to the community.”
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President Higgins said he had been struck by the “long details of lives” lost in the tragedy, outlined during the funerals, many by parish priest Fr John Joe Duffy — “a rock” in the community — and their different relations and tasks “working with their hands and their heads” and “all of what they shared.”
It shows in a small community where “relationships are so close and where people have intimate knowledge of families and circumstance” that it “isn’t a single person or family” who bears the brunt of a “terrible tragedy” like this but the whole community, he said.
President Higgins said he found it “very moving”.
While the first reaction after the blast and it’s aftermath was “shock, a kind of silence, a numbness” over to cope with a “tragedy of this magnitude”, an “extraordinary co-operation” swung into place as arrangements had to be made and things done.
“It has showed me something: how the best instincts and decency of people come to the fore,” he added
President Higgins said the “big challenge now the funerals are over” will be “all the vacant spaces there, all the loss being experienced” and that “something new will have to take its place, new relationships, new connections, new functions”.
President Higgins said he was certain Creeslough had the “determination and courage” to do that.
