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 said the family was “numbed” by the report and “does not accept” that Adrian Dunne (29) was “responsible” for the murder of his wife Ciara (24), his daughters Leanne (5) and Shania (3) and his own suicide.
They “could not understand why the report contains details of the postmortems” and believed that the cause and circumstances of the deaths were a “matter for the gardai" and an inquest. Mr Murphy pointed out that “this was not a criminal inquiry”.
Mr Murphy said that while the family “is not interested in apportioning blame to their own son or his wife”, he 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 if the family thought that the couple had “a suicide pact”, Mr Murphy said he “couldn’t possibly” ask them that question.
Speaking in Enniscorthy, Mr Murphy also 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 up the report 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”.
But it was “obvious” from reading the report that “a double-standard had been employed” because “in relation to the dead” unlike the living 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 know to the social services “going back over ten years. Even before the couple had children, this was “a family with huge problems” which “needed help”. He said the 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 “what was the point of the report unless it identified shortcomings in the system” which could be improved and prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
Mr Murphy said that his legal firm, John A. Sinnott, had been retained by the surviving members of the Dunne family not because they are litigious but for “protection” from constant and 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.