Dara Quigley: ‘She wasn’t afraid and she wasn’t a victim’

Dara Quigley was remembered as "a strong and intelligent woman" at a vigil outside Leinster House on Friday evening.

Ms Quigley’s brother Seán told a congregation of about 100 people on Kildare Street that his sister had opened the world to him.

“Without her, I don’t know where I would have been. She didn’t just do that with me, she led by example in a lot of ways. She wasn’t afraid and she wasn’t a victim.”

Ms Quigley (36), a former journalist and blogger, took her own life on April 12th, five days after she had been detained by gardaí under the Mental Health Act. She had been walking naked in a Dublin street when detained.

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A Garda CCTV video of her detention was posted on Facebook shortly before her death.

Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald has said an investigation and a GSOC (Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission) inquiry into the events surrounding Ms Quigley has begun.

Ms Quigley's family described the experience as "deeply distressing".

“We want Dara to be remembered, not for this thing that happened, I’m not going to talk about that, obviously there’s an investigation going on. Dara was not a victim,” Seán Quigley said.

“In January 2015, Dara decided she wanted to make a change in society, she wasn’t happy with a lot of the things she saw and the way people were being treated.

“So she said as a New Year’s resolution ‘I’m going to be a writer and I’m going to make a change’.

"In January 2016 she was writing for the Dublin Inquirer. That's the kind of Dara that I want to remember and I think that's the kind of Dara that should be remembered."

The vigil was organised by Ms Quigley’s family to demand better services for people struggling with mental health problems.

Dr Harry Browne, a friend of Ms Quigley's and lecturer of journalism at DIT, said: "We're here partly because we are thinking a little bit of Dara as a victim.

“She was a victim of callous humanity, of vicious austerity and now we know of this kind of ignorant vulgarity of this state and of the people who are involved in running it.

“I know when I met Dara about three weeks before she passed away, she was pretty beaten down by those things. She was in a bad way and she looked like a victim. But she wouldn’t really have that, that wasn’t her. She slagged me afterwards for the fright that she’d given me.”

Social Democrat councillor Gary Gannon said he "can't understand the cruelty that it would take to diminish a person in that manner and that's what hurts, I don't know how that reflects on us as a society.

“When I seen the attempt to diminish her, by the State, by representatives of the State, you know what I realised over the last 24 hours it’s not the first time, it’s not even close to being the first time.

"Young homeless activist Erica Fleming spending two years in a hotel room, her personal details leaked to a newspaper to shame her."