The son of an Irish soldier who was gunned down by the IRA says he felt “cut to the bone” that the Wolfe Tones band led thousands of people in chanting the IRA slogan 'Ooh aah up the Ra' at Ireland's largest music festival.

Some 75,000 attended the Electric Picnic in Stradbally, Co Laois over the weekend, where the controversial band performed.

For years the Wolfe Tones have led crowds in the pro-IRA chant at the West Belfast Festival.

Now video has emerged of them leading thousands in the same chant at Electric Picnic.

David Kelly said he felt “cut to the bone”.

His father, Private Patrick Kelly, along with Garda Gary Sheehan, were shot dead in a Co Leitrim wood near Ballinamore in 1983 by an IRA gang that had kidnapped supermarket executive Don Tidey.

Mr Kelly said the gang had been given logistical support in the woods by former Sinn Fein vice president and former IRA chief of staff, John Joe McGirl.

On Saturday Sinn Fein MP John Finucane led a commemoration walk for Mr McGirl at Ballinamore Family Festival close to where the murders took place.

placeholder image — The Wolf Tones performing at the Electric Picnic festival last weekend, as captured by someone who attended.

“It has been quite a few days,” Mr Kelly told the News Letter.

“Between the John Joe McGirl memorial walk at a publicly funded community festival, and then the following day, you had the Wolfe Tones at the Electric Picnic, which culminated in them playing a song that has the offensive lyrics 'Ooh aah up the Ra'.

“So between the two, it's been a very challenging few days for me personally. I'm just imagining how it is for all the other people across the island of Ireland who have been affected by IRA or indeed loyalist violence.

“I feel very hurt at times, it is like a deep insult, and it's really hurtful. It feels like it cuts to the bone.”

He said it has been reported that 2,000 people turned up for the memorial walk in Ballinamore.

“They're having this parade for a man who was complicit in my father's murder. So, I mean, you know that's just very difficult to deal with. And then, you know, and then you have this Electric Picnic festival, with some thousands of people chanting that offensive slogan.

“But 'the Ra', as they're called, murdered my father. So between the two, I sometimes wonder do people not realise the hurt and devastation that was caused to families by the IRA?

“I think it could be to do with the fact that people don't know, it's not in the education system. They haven't been taught about the brutality of the Provisional IRA campaign of violence, of terrorist violence in general.

“And it has sort of been romanticised, since the Troubles.

“There's a vacuum there, and people are romanticising what happened. But if people knew what they did, what the so-called ‘Ra did to my father and all the other victims, they would be too ashamed to chant that, and they should be too ashamed.”

He added: “Sometimes it does feel like it would suit people if I didn't speak up about my father, but it was a scandal. There's been a wall of silence for decades now, but I'm proud to speak up for my father and what he stood for – the rule of law, for democracy, for trying to get a kidnapped man back to his family, and also for justice and truth in relation to what happened to him.”

Nobody was ever convicted for the murders.