Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I echo the comments of the Minister for Justice and Equality and colleagues here. On behalf of the Regional Group of Deputies, I express our heartfelt sympathy to Marty, Deirdre, Aiden, Brendan, Dermot, Padraig and the extended Horkan family.

June in Castlerea Garda station would traditionally be ball hopping month – Connacht football hopping. Castlerea station services the crossroads of the football giants in Connacht - Galway, Mayo and Roscommon. Colm Horkan, who served 21 years as a garda in west Roscommon, would be in the thick of it. This year there is no football banter, every member of the force doing their bit to support people who were cocooning and remaining socially distant in an area of rural Ireland where people are physically and socially isolated at the best of times. The gardaí were a lifeline to the outside world during lockdown for so many. For recently promoted Detective Garda Colm Horkan, this would have been so very natural to him.

The Garda Commissioner said of Colm that he "epitomised what all of us as members of An Garda Síochána should strive to be". The former Mayo footballer John Casey said of him: "He was respected by everyone who knew him." He went on to point out that: "Colm is the fellow you would bring into the trenches with you." Not a bad attribute for a centre half forward. But this year in Castlerea there was no football banter. It was replaced instead with the shocked silence of last Thursday morning that reverberated right across this country, in fact right across the globe.

Roscommon people from all over the world, from Canada to Australia, have contacted me. On behalf of the people of County Roscommon and on my own behalf, we say thank you to Colm, not for doing his job but for the manner in which he did it. That is the abiding commentary I have heard. For me, the tribute paid by a man who I hold in very high regard, retired Garda Sergeant John Hynes, says it all about Colm. His attention to detail was meticulous and the rights and needs of victims were paramount to him. Those attributes helped secure convictions and prevent further abuses of women and children across the west of Ireland. Some of those abuses took up many hours of debate here in Dáil Éireann and led to important changes in the law. We have no idea of the countless lives that would have been destroyed were it not for the perseverance and dedication of Detective Garda Colm Horkan. Ar deis Dé go raibh a anam.

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