A Fermanagh-based victims support group has joined in on the debate about the Joe McGirl memorial walk planned for Ballinamore Family Festival. Kenny Donaldson is the Director of the South East Fermanagh Foundation, based in Lisnaskea, which was set up in 1998, "by chance rather than design" on the same day as the Omagh Bomb. Since then, the group has been supporting victims of all Troubles-related violence.
Last year, the son of an Private Patrick Kelly objected to the walk in honour of IRA man Joe McGirl. Private Kelly was killed in the line of duty alongside Garda Gary Sheehan from Carrickmacross as both were involved in the rescue of Don Tidey, the supermarket executive kidnapped by the IRA in 1983. David Kelly told the Joe Finnegan Show the memorial walk planned for this weekend's festival is "an affront" to his father and Garda Sheehan.
Kenny Donaldson also made a direct appeal for such commemorations by both sides of the Irish conflict to cease: "Now, you'll hear from the wider populace, people who have not been directly affected by the violence: 'Why would you even bother, would you not just live and let live? This is something that needs to be sucked up'. I'm sorry, but it's not," Mr Donaldson said, "I watch young people whenever I would go out at the weekends in a town and you hear them in a trance-like state chanting and singing songs which revere people who murdered their neighbours. They didn't murder strangers. They murdered their neighbours in cold blood and that is something that people need to be continually reminded of."
