Enniskillen bomb relatives appeal to Catholic primate

A memorial to the 12 victims was unveiled last year at a special ceremony marking 30 years since the attack on Remembrance Sunday 1987.

However, St Michael’s Diocesan Trust, which owns the land around the bomb decided to reject the proposal, citing a number of concerns, and the memorial was removed after the ceremony and placed into storage.

Monsignor Peter O’Reilly, parish priest of Enniskillen and a Trust director, said the size of the memorial poses “insurmountable” problems for access to the site, and also said there were issues around maintenance and “liability” for insurance purposes.

Now, the families are taking their call to the Catholic Primate of Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin.

Stephen Gault, whose father Samuel was killed in the bombing told Good Morning Ulster: “We are deeply hurt, upset is an understatement, but not surprised. Over the years we have had different memorials or tributes to the Enniskillen bombing, the one in the ambulance station which was removed. We had the controversy ten years ago with the Fire Station [collage removed also] and now this.”

Good Morning Ulster (GMU) put it to Margaret Veitch, whose parents were also killed in the atrocity, that the church had said it was not opposed to a memorial but had difficulties with this particular one, and asked if there was any possibility of compromise.

She replied: “There could be room for compromise but nobody will meet with us. Monsignor O’Reilly and Monsignor McGuinness will not meet with the families. We have request for months and nobody will meet with us. I would like a face to face meeting and maybe we could come to some compromise but we can’t change the wording on the memorial because we are only telling the truth.”

She said was “appalled” by the fact that local politicians, clergy and the community had given them no support.

Mr Gault agreed that he felt the issue had been “brushed under the carpet” and said there had been no response from Protestant churches in the town and only one response from a politician.

He dismissed concerns about the size of the memorial, saying they had been clearly laid out in the planning application for comment and feedback at that stage.

“So for the Catholic church to say they were surprised by the size of the memorial, I find that very hard to believe when in the application the whole dimensions, the size of the memorial, were in the application.”

GMU put it to him that the church said in November that they had been “taken by surprise” by the whole thing because they had not been informed by the council of the application and that the council said it had not been its responsibility to inform the church.

But Mr Gault said “quite a bit” had come out in recent months.

“I can tell you that this conversation did take place with certain individuals within the Catholic church as far back as May and June last year and they were well aware of our proposal to put the memorial where we applied planning permission for.”

Mrs Veitch said Archbishop Martin spoke last year publicly about Enniskillen, respect and reconciliation and the two Monsignors were in the congregation at the time, so should now “hang their heads in shame”.

Mr Gault said they had been asking monthly to meet with the church locally since November.

“And every time they come back and say they are unavailable to meet.”

A meeting could result in some workable compromise, he said.

His wife, who is Catholic, has also asked repeatedly for meetings with her own church and has also been refused, he added.

Kenny Donaldson, of the South East Fermanagh Foundation, which supports many of the Enniskillen bereaved and injured, said it was a “very difficult situation that threatens relations in the area”.

“We have a group of people who are victims. They are merely asking a Christian Church to give consent to their plan to remember their dead in a very dignified way,” he told the BBC.

“We are calling on Eamon Martin to use his good offices to step in and deal with this issue. I have never known the Enniskillen victims to be in such pain and very much hurt with what is happening.

“All they want is to have something on the site and know that their loved ones are not forgotten.”

Last week the wife of an Enniskillen Poppy Day bomb survivor said she was “ashamed” at her church’s rejection of a permanent memorial to the 12 victims.

Sharon Harrington Gault, whose father-in-law Samuel Gault was killed in the attack, and who is a member of the parish church, tweeted: “As a Enniskillen Parishioner I am ashamed of St Michael’s Trust. I can confirm that they did not correspond with us during the last 7 months.”

The proposed memorial site is adjacent to what is now the Clinton Centre – named after US President Bill Clinton and designed to promote peace building in the area.