"Yesterday should have been a day of celebration - it was Daragh's 15th birthday and boy did he love his birthday. The presents, the cards, the trip to the cinema with his friends and of course McDonald's.
"This year his birthday was a visit to his grave, a bunch of flowers and a card and this is the way all his future birthdays will be for as long as I am alive and able to visit his grave.
". . . I will always remember that Tuesday night [the night Daragh was murdered] for as long as I live - searching Mountmellick for hours and trying to contact Daragh on his mobile and then being told that he was dead. Worse still, that he had been murdered and that I couldn't even see him, couldn't hold him, couldn't go to him.
"He lay in that cold field all that night and 'til the afternoon of the next day.
". . . Even with counselling there is so much pain, hurt and anger bottled up inside that you wonder will it ever stop or will it ever get any easier.
"Arriving in court on July 19th and being told that the accused was pleading not guilty and that the trial would take approximately eight days . . . I thought, was it not enough that he had killed my child but now he wanted to continue my suffering and make me relive all the horrific details of his death?
". . . Being at that court was the same as Daragh being killed day after day after day. I felt invisible in court, it wasn't the loss of Daragh, it was totally about proving the innocence of the accused. Daragh didn't matter, he wasn't important. There was no one there to represent Daragh, no one to tell his side of the story. Daragh had no rights, his family had no rights. All the rights were for the accused.
"One thing I have to commend is the unfailing dedication, support and respect of the Garda investigation team throughout this time and the support of the court victim counsellors.
"The total lack of remorse of the convicted during and following the trial chilled me to the bone.
". . . I can't and don't think I ever will make any sense of this, not one minute of the day goes by without thinking why. What was the reason for someone to do such an appalling thing - to murder someone in such a vicious, senseless, unprovoked way? But that's the one question that has not been answered and it looks like it will never be and that to me is the most difficult thing to live with - the not knowing why."