Eurovision winners perform song for lost loved ones at Console service

United by grief and family tragedy, Eurovision winners Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan have co-written a song. Song for Siobhán is about Harrington's sister, who died from cancer in 2005. Harrington debuted the song at the annual Console Christmas service of remembrance in St Patrick's College, Maynooth.

Harrington told the congregation of more than 1,000 relatives and friends bereaved by suicide that he struggled for years to write the song. Song for Siobhán is based on a dream he had where his sister appeared to him dressed in white. He completed the song with the help of McGettigan, who has struggled with his own grief after the tragic death of his son Shane in a construction accident in Boston 16 years ago.

The pair met up last year to celebrate 20 years of their Eurovision winner Rock and Roll Kids. "I could never write one about Siobhán, he could never write one about his son Shane, but we wrote this together."

The annual Console Celebration of Light was held in Maynooth and four other locations across Ireland. The church was in darkness for the service except for a candle-lit altar and lit Christmas tree.

The bereaved were the “broken-hearted”, broadcaster and author Christy Kenneally told those who had come. “We come here, dressed in the tatters of our dreams, carrying the pieces of the life and love we knew and loved. We are shocked to the core of our hearts by the death of someone near to us.”

The service is held every year and is an opportunity for those who are bereaved to meet up and reflect. Margaret Brennan, whose sister died by suicide three years ago, said she found the first year “unbearable”, found last year equally tough but this year, “I might finally be getting somewhere”.

The emotions she went through involved “grief, guilt, hurt, horror, pain, the blame”, but after three years “all that is left is love”.

Declan O'Rourke sang his best-known song, Galileo, Rebecca Storm sang Tell Me It's Not True and the Snow Patrol song Run. Another Eurovision winner, Niamh Kavanagh, sang the old Nat King Cole classic When I fall in Love and the Beatles song In My Life. of remembrance

Author Deirdre Purcell read the John O'Donoghue poem Absence with its refrain: "May you know that absence is alive with hidden presence, that nothing is ever lost or forgotten".