Clodagh’s family meet new Garda Chief

Seamus Enright

The family of the late Clodagh Hawe will meet with Garda Commissioner Drew Harris today.

It follows a meeting between Clodagh’s mother Mary Coll and sister Jacqueline Connolly with Minister for Justice Charles Flanagan last week.

The family have called for a full inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Clodagh and her three sons and for a review of inheritance laws in such cases and how they are handled at inquest level.

It’s expected, as with the meeting with Minister Flanagan, that Ms Coll and her daughter will again raise concerns over the denial of access to garda investigation files and how evidence was handled after Clodagh’s husband Alan Hawe murdered his family at their Castlerahan home in August 2016.

It has, Ms Connolly admitted to The Anglo-Celt, been “frustrating” that it has taken for them to “pour our hearts out” on national television for the Government to “finally take notice” of struggles faced by their family since the deaths of Clodagh and her boys, Liam (13), Niall (11) and Ryan (6).

“We never wanted it to get to this. We never wanted to go public. Clodagh was very private, and [Claire Byrne Live on RTE] is not something we considered lightly. We did it with heavy hearts,” explained Ms Connolly.

“We did it knowing we’d have to talk about Clodagh, her death and her life, but we felt that an injustice had been done at the inquest, with the diagnosis [of mental health] given in retrospect.”

They maintain that Alan Hawe meticulously planned the killing of his family, and the acts were not carried as a result of mental illness.

Ms Connolly wrote a near 2,500 word open letter lifting the lid on those experiences endured. It was published in the Sunday Independent at the weekend.

Concerning evidence gathered specifically, Ms Connolly outlined how she and her mother feel that key information was not given to them by gardaí.

Ms Connolly said that a local man came forward to tell her he made a statement to gardaí telling them that he and another person saw Hawe driving his car, near Castlerahan National School, “very early” on the morning the murders took place.

‘So, after Alan Hawe murdered his wife and three sons, did he leave the house to go to his place of work, Castlerahan National School, where he was vice principal, perhaps to destroy evidence?’, asked Ms Connolly in the article published.

She told the Celt, when An Garda Síochána officially denied their solicitor access to investigation files last month, “that was the last straw. We’ve been asking these questions for a long time. We just can’t leave it. We’re doing this for Clodagh and the boys.”

Ms Connolly and her mum have been hugely heartened by the outpouring of support shown to them since going public, and by those using the #HerNameWasClodagh tag online. She hopes now that backing can transcend into pressure on the Government and authorities to press ahead with commissioning an independent inquiry.

Meanwhile, a Go Fund Me page set up in the wake of the Claire Byrne Live programme was taken down after Ms Connolly highlighted on her own social media page that it had no connection to either her or her family.

‘Please ignore this as mam and I would never in a million years accept money from anyone on the back of our grief.’