Paul Quinn murder: Mother urges voters to remember her son when voting – if Sinn Fein don’t name IRA killers

Paul Quinn from Cullyhanna, was lured to a barn in Co Monaghan in October 2007, where he was set upon by around ten men with metal and nail-studded bars and beaten for more than half an hour. Every major bone in his body was broken. He died a few hours later.

Only days away from voting in the southern general election, Paul’s mother, Breege Quinn, has now repeated her rejection of suggestions by Sinn Féin MLA and Northern Ireland Finance Minister Conor Murphy that her son’s death was connected to criminal activity.

She called on Mr Murphy to apologise and retract his comments and to bring any information he had about her son’s death to the Garda and PSNI.

“He definitely was not involved in criminality,” she told RTE. “That was Sinn Féin spin. That was Conor Murphy spin. We have asked him and we have asked Mary Lou [McDonald, Sinn Féin president] to ask him to apologise to us publicly, to tell us who were the people he spoke to in Cullyhana, because he said he spoke to the IRA in Cullyhana and they assured him they did not murder Paul Quinn.”

She said she knew who killed her son and she believed Sinn Féin had key information that could bring them before the courts.

“I am saying this evening to people who are going out to vote on Saturday, unless Conor Murphy or Mary Lou McDonald come out publicly and tell us who the IRA were that Conor Murphy spoke to, I’m saying to the people: ‘Remember Paul Quinn when you are marking your X.’”

But Ms McDonald said there was no question of Mr Quinn being a criminal.

“I have spoken to Conor Murphy before and he is very clear that he never said that and that is not his view... The criminals are the people who took Paul’s life,” she said.

Asked if Mr Murphy should go to gardaí and tell them whom in the IRA he spoke to, she said: “I think the job of the investigation falls to the PSNI and to An Garda Síochána...I believe that Conor has been very forthright in dealing with these matters.”

The Sinn Féin leader said she did not believe that it had been said that Mr Quinn was a criminal. She said she believed the best thing to do now was for Mr Murphy “to speak to Breege and the family”.

In November the PSNI said the 2015 government finding – of the IRA Army Council still overseeing Sinn Fein – remains unchanged.

The government’s 2015 report concluded that the IRA, though much reduced in scale and “committed to the peace process”, still has “specific” departments and “regional command structures”, gathers intelligence, retains weapons and may engage in “isolated violence” including murder.

Speaking about the latest PSNI assessment of the IRA, Mrs Quinn said: “The only thing I know is that when Paul was murdered in 2007 Conor Murphy MLA for South Armagh said he spoke to the IRA and they gave him good assurances that they didn’t do it.

“But how could he have spoken to the IRA when there was supposed to be no IRA? I would just like to ask Conor Murphy who he spoke to. The Quinn family are awaiting his answers.”

Sinn Fein offered no direct answers to her questions.

Soon after Paul Quinn’s death, then-Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams declared the IRA were innocent.

Just after the murder, the Quinn family told the BBC their son was no criminal and his only crime was to fall out with the son of a local IRA leader.

Speaking to the BBC, then-Sinn Fein MP for the area Conor Murphy insisted it was not correct to say local fuel smuggling is controlled by current or former IRA members.

When the BBC put it to him that the Quinn family insisted Paul was not involved in criminality but had simply fallen foul of the son of a local IRA leader, Mr Murphy replied: “I have spoken to the IRA in his area and I am satisfied with the assurances they gave me, very solid assurances, that they weren’t involved in his death.”

Sinn Fein MP Mickey Brady responded to Mrs Quinn in November. He said: “The IRA is gone and not coming back.”

On the tenth anniversary of his murder, Mrs Quinn told the News Letter that her son was “crucified” by the IRA and that doctors told her “they left nothing for us to fix”.

Every bone in his body had been broken.

“Paul was always in good form, always up for a laugh, playing jokes on you, ” she said.

“He would have his friends in and he would get the frying pan and he would cook everything that was in the house.

“Paul was not keen on school.

“But he didn’t mind working, he would work at anything. He loved driving tractors, he would go to work on the buildings if anyone was stuck.

“He couldn’t wait to get his lorry licence to drive a lorry. That is what he wanted to do.”

However, the good times with her son were to come to an unimaginable end in 2007.

It was a Saturday and Paul had left home before she was awake.

The terrible news came when his girlfriend rang Paul’s sister to say he had been beaten up and that his arms and legs were broken.

“She rang again to say the ambulance was on the way to the hospital and they had him on a life support machine. They said for us to get to the hospital as quick as we could.”

But he had died by the time they arrived.

“The doctor came out and said: They left nothing for us to fix’.

“It is unreal isn’t it? They just crucified him.”

The reason he was targeted was because he had “run ins with the son of the top IRA man” she said.

“Neither of the two of them were ever in hospital.”

After one such row a young man told Paul he would be shot, she said. Then a woman connected to the IRA followed him to a chip shop. Speaking with a hammer in her hand, she told him: You will be got along the side of the road in a black bag’.

Breege said: “When you are a son of one of them you can say whatever you like to anybody.”

A month later her son was murdered. She confirmed that every bone in Paul’s body was broken.

“That is correct, yes. They could not even put rosary beads in his hand in the coffin. He was smashed.”

Some people responsible live very close to the Quinn family and would see the family on a regular basis.

“They couldn’t look at us now. They just look away. The community was stunned.”

It caused major anger against mainstream republicanism. “It did do surely, yes. It would have caused a lot ... just among themselves.”