REACTION:A SOLICITOR representing the Dunne family has described the Monageer Report as "a whitewash" and "a huge waste of public money".
John Murphy, who represents the mother and siblings of the late Adrian Dunne, said the family was “very disappointed”.
He also revealed that the family which is “numbed” by the report “does not accept” that Adrian Dunne (29) was “responsible” for the murder of his wife Ciara (24) by strangling, his daughters Leanne (5) and Shania (3) by smothering, and his own suicide by hanging.
They “could not understand why the report contains details of the postmortems”, and believed the cause and circumstances of the deaths were a “matter for the gardaí” and an inquest. Mr Murphy pointed out that “this was not a criminal inquiry”.
Mr Murphy said the Dunne family “is not interested in apportioning blame to their own son or his wife”, and pointed out that Ciara Dunne “had gone to the undertaker” in New Ross with her husband to plan the family’s funerals and “he wasn’t twisting her arm or leading her by a rope”.
Asked whether the family thought the couple had agreed “a suicide pact”, Mr Murphy said he “couldn’t possibly” ask them that question.
Speaking in Enniscorthy, he expressed concern that sections of the document had been “blacked out” and that “it would appear that someone didn’t like what was in the report”.
He claimed that the “professional team” who had drawn it up had “decided to interpret the terms of reference” to mean that “their function was not to zone in on any particular individual but more to look at the process”.
However, it was obvious from reading the report that a double-standard had been employed, he said, because “in relation to the dead” there was “very much a zoning in on who might or might not have been at fault in causing this terrible tragedy”.
He said people should have been named “not for vilification or to be held up to ridicule”, but, “if you’re going to spend public money”, then it was important that “people are identified and told, ‘look, you didn’t do a very good job; here’s what you should have done, and will you please do it properly next time?’ ”
Mr Murphy said that Adrian and Ciara Dunne, who “both had major disabilities”, were known to the social services “going back over 10 years”. Even before the couple had children, this was “a family with huge problems” which “needed help”. He said social services should have provided counselling and risk monitoring, and that social workers should have been visiting the house “regularly”.
He added: “Maybe in this particular case it was not possible to prevent this tragedy” but, he asked, “what was the point of the report unless it identified shortcomings in the system?” He suggested such could be used to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
Mr Murphy said his firm, John A Sinnott, had been retained by the family, not because they were litigious, but for “protection” from persistent media questioning which “they found very difficult to deal with”. He said he expects inquests into the four deaths to be held in Enniscorthy soon.
Adrian Dunne and his wife and children lived in the village of Monageer, six miles from Enniscorthy. Mr Dunne’s mother and surviving siblings live near the village of Clonroche, Co Wexford. Ciara Dunne was a native of Co Donegal.