Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I welcome Lucia and all her family who are in the Gallery. Today we should not be taking about Shane O'Farrell. Shane should have been getting on with his life, coming up to his 30th birthday, loving life and enjoying his career, but he met his end in a very violent way. Anybody who knows the circumstances before 2 August 2011 would know Shane should be alive today.

We should not be talking about Shane O'Farrell: he should be living his life with his family.

One would have to be completely incompetent or complicit to accept as an accident the circumstances that led up to the events of the 2 August 2011. This was an accident waiting to happen because of gross negligence and missed opportunities in the conduct of the local police force and the judicial system, which at best were completely incompetent and at worst bankrupt.

The system completely failed Shane and the O'Farrell family, even to this day. There has been a catalogue of failures, a litany so obvious that Shane's family at least deserves a proper explanation. The explanation has not come in the whitewash of the GSOC report. The family has waited for six years to hear something they already knew. I put it to the Minister that the only way the family will get justice is through a public inquiry. We all know that it will not bring Shane back and that the person who killed him on that night probably cannot be prosecuted, but the family can get justice. If the family does not get justice then it is a travesty. The family seeks some sort of closure and that there is some sort of accountability around the person who did this and the system that backed it up. This is all the family looks for. It is a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but that is what the family looks for.

When we consider the GSOC report and all the failures of the system, anybody reading it - a lay person or a Deputy - would have serious questions on the role of the local police force and the collusion with the judicial system. Serious questions must be asked about particular people referred to in the report.

These are questions for the Minister and the Department of Justice and Equality to answer. The family asks that the Minister would stop prevaricating and give this family some sort of justice through a public inquiry. It will not bring Shane back, but in his memory justice should be done for the family.

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