{"id":364601,"date":"2026-03-02T22:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T22:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/364601\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T22:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T22:58:10","slug":"my-job-is-not-to-be-sensitive-says-ocallaghan-after-rejecting-creeslough-families-meeting-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/364601\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My job is not to be sensitive\u2019, says O\u2019Callaghan, after rejecting Creeslough families meeting \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

When asked if his refusal to meet families affected by the Creeslough<\/a> tragedy was insensitive, Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan<\/a> said his job was not to be sensitive, but to ensure that justice was delivered.<\/p>\n

He was speaking to reporters during a cross-Border police conference held by An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na<\/a> and the Police Service of Northern Ireland<\/a> (PSNI) in Co Cavan<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the mother of 14-year-old Leona Harper, who died in the 2022 explosion, told UTV O\u2019Callaghan\u2019s rejection of a request for a further meeting was a \u201cslap in the face\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Harper family have been campaigning for a public inquiry into the blast at a Co Donegal<\/a> service station which killed 10 people.<\/p>\n

On Monday O\u2019Callaghan said: \u201cListen, my job is not to be sensitive; my job is to ensure that justice is delivered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the Minister for Justice, I want to ensure that the families of Creeslough get justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way justice can be provided to them is through the courts and we\u2019re at a very advanced stage of the criminal investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said one file has already been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions and that a second was \u201cforthcoming\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cThere needs to be, and I hope there will be, criminal prosecutions in respect of what happened at Creeslough and that\u2019s the mechanism to provide justice for the Creeslough families.\u201d<\/p>\n

There will be an inquest and \u201cother statutory investigations\u201d that will take place after the end of the criminal proceedings, he said.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cIf, at the end of the process, there are answers that still need to be provided I\u2019ll certainly consider an inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he has \u201cno difficulty in meeting the families\u201d and had already met the Harpers in Donegal in December, \u201cbut we need to allow time for the criminal prosecutions to be initiated\u201d.<\/p>\n

He attended the conference alongside Northern Ireland\u2019s justice minister Naomi Long, Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly and PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher.<\/p>\n

The annual event focused on organised and serious crime.<\/p>\n

On the issue of online far-right radicalisation Long said: \u201cWe\u2019ve seen this develop in Northern Ireland quite rapidly over the last number of years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to be really clear in everything we say, when we\u2019re talking about issues of immigration, when we\u2019re talking about issues of how we deal with that, that we are not creating a loophole which gives people any kind of validation or justification for intimidation, threat and terrorising vulnerable people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not for anyone else to take the law into their own hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said both police forces need to \u201clearn from each other\u201d, and highlighted the importance of sharing information between the two jurisdictions because of the \u201ccross-Border\u201d nature of the crimes involved. \u2013 PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When asked if his refusal to meet families affected by the Creeslough tragedy was insensitive, Minister for Justice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[956,9,10,42554,36393,6368,18,13,14,6,19,17,26735,29801,11,12,15,16,5,952,7,8],"class_list":["post-364601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-cavan","tag-creeslough","tag-donegal","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jim-ocallaghan","tag-justin-kelly","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-police-service-of-northern-ireland-psni","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116162062316713507","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}