A family from which women of three generations were killed in the Omagh bombing have spoken about the immeasurable pain caused by the atrocity and said they hope no other family suffers as they have.
They were speaking at a public inquiry established to determine whether the attack, the worst in the Troubles in Northern Ireland, could have been prevented.
Mary Grimes died in the explosion on her 66th birthday, along with her daughter Avril Monaghan, 30, who was pregnant with twin daughters, and Avril’s 20-month-old daughter Maura. The bomb killed 29 people and injured 220. The inquiry chair, Alan Turnbull, described the impact as an “incomprehensible loss”.
The inquiry was shown photographs of Grimes, her daughter Monaghan and little Maura, who won a “bonnie baby” competition during her short life, as well as ultrasound scan pictures of the unborn twin girls, who had been named Eimear and Evelyn. Mary and her husband had raised 11 children together, building up a large dairy farm. By 1998, Avril and her husband had four children and the twins on the way.
In a recording played to the inquiry, Avril Monaghan’s daughter Aoibheann described Maura as a “source of light and joy to our family and everyone around her”, with a “bubbly personality and unmistakable head of curly hair”.
“The Omagh bomb stole our mummy from her loved ones, leaving behind a grieving husband and three of her children, aged only five, four and three, as well as the wide Monaghan and Grimes families,” she said.
“The loss we as a family have experienced over the last 26 years cannot be measured,” she said, adding that they “only hope that no other family has to suffer as we did”.
Fearghal Grimes, Avril’s brother, described his mother, Mary, as a woman with a strong Catholic faith, a strong work ethic and a “deep sense of family values, and she lived these out every day”.
“The Omagh bomb robbed us, her family, her husband, friends and neighbours, a chance to pay back the love and affection she had shown to all of [them],” he said.
Earlier, siblings of a 16-year-old schoolboy killed in the Omagh bombing told how they had been forced to relocate from the town, such was the pain and grief they still feel over his loss. Claire Hayes, sister of Alan Radford, told how she had lost her “other half”.
“There are no words for the immense grief that I feel, how shattered my life had been without him,” she said.
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She read a statement from her sister Elaine, who said their family had been “broken beyond repair” by the bomb. “There is no way of healing our heart. Our family has been changed beyond all recognition.”
Elaine and Alan’s brother Paul both moved away to avoid the awful reminders of that day, but say the pain and fear are still there.
“I left home with my husband and my three children and we are still living with the repercussions of it all,” she said. “My older brother Paul had also to relocate. What he had to witness was beyond harrowing.”