Members of the Traveller and settled communities will gather in Cashel this afternoon for a vigil to remember three members of the O’Reilly family who tragically lost their lives in a crash on Tuesday night.
Tom and Bridget died in the crash near Cashel along with their grandson Tom while their son Tom Jnr and daughter-in-law Diane suffered serious injuries.
The vigil will take place in St John the Baptist Church in Cashel at 3 o’clock this afternoon.
Mags Casey of the Tipperary Rural Travellers’ Project said the O’Reilly family wanted to thank the emergency services for their efforts and also the wider community in Cashel.
“I want to say a big thank you to everybody from the settled community as well. It’s very much appreciated in terms of their kindness and their support to us as a community. We want to express our gratitude and if they could continue to be kind for the next couple of days, weeks and months and years ahead and continue to show the solidarity. Likewise it’s been a difficult month in Tipperary – we lost four lovely children (in Clonmel) – we felt that pain as well for members of our settled community.”
The tragic death of Tom and Bridget O’Reilly has left a young family of ten orphaned.
Six of their children are under the age of 18 with members of the Tipperary Rural Travellers’ Project liaising with the child and family agency TUSLA.
Mags Casey says they will do everything to keep the family together.
“We want this family kept together and reared together within the Travelling community – we need Travellers to be kept together. We need the six children to be kept together. It’s hard enough to lose one parent but to lose both parents is extremely difficult. The Traveller community have a lot of capacity in rearing children and that’s what we’ve got to do. That’s the plan that we have for the future is to keep the family and that the brother and sister-in-law with rear the family.”
