PSNI close GAA pundit Joe Brolly’s kidney enquiry but won’t say if it met him in person

In a deeply personal television interview in 2021, the former All-Ireland GAA player, pundit, barrister and journalist from Dungiven was brought to tears when asked about donating a kidney.

“I realised soon afterwards that the reason I’d given the kidney was to, I think, atone for the taking of human life by people close to me, and to sort of somehow make amends for that,” he said.

He also spoke of growing up not really knowing his father Francie Brolly, who was interned for three years when he was a child and died “a stranger to me”.

His father was arrested in 2005 while a Sinn Fein MLA and questioned about the 1972 IRA bombing of Claudy which claimed nine lives. He was later released without charge. Francie later told this paper the attack was “appalling” and that he did not not personally know the perpetrators.

He later left Sinn Fein after it adopted a pro-choice stance on abortion and helped set up Aontu. He told the News Letter he saw no contradiction in defending the life of the unborn while defending the killing of soldiers.

In the case of “an IRA man killing a soldier, or a soldier killing an IRA man... they both know what they’re doing – they’re adults, they can think... But to kill an innocent baby in the womb, I think that’s inexcusable in any man’s language” Francie told the News Letter.

Joe Brolly is also on record as saying that his childhood home was used as a safe house for IRA men, including Martin McGuinness, when he was a child,

After the 2021 TV interview Kenny Donaldson of the South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF), who represents some of the Claudy families, asked the PSNI to investigate who Joe had been referring to in his interview.

The PSNI told the News Letter this week that it “reviewed the content of the interview and conducted a number of enquiries” but that “no further action was deemed necessary” and the matter is now “considered closed”. The News Letter asked the PSNI if it had attempted to question Mr Brolly in person, but it declined to say.

Speaking to the News Letter earlier this week, Mr Brolly said he “wouldn’t have any evidence of any [terrorist] activity” and but that “people I knew, people I was very close to...[were] going to prison”.

He added that through the donation he was “making it clear” that he had “nothing to do with any of this” violence and that he was “going to make that obvious by giving a kidney to a total stranger”.

His priority was “the sanctity of human life ... and [to make clear that] anything that was done in the past was not done in my name... I fully abhor it.” The journalist and barrister added that the donation was sort of “a very public act of separation” from violence.”

Mr Brolly said the way forward for NI was breaking down barriers and building reconciliation. He praised work in this area by Alan McBride, whose wife Sharon was killed in the Shankill bomb.

In 2017 Mr Brolly made a public display of support for a victim of terror, former PSNI constable Peadar Heffron.