A PRIEST celebrating the funeral Mass of two murdered brothers who were involved in gangland crime has told mourners their killings were a “sharp and necessary warning” to young people in danger of being drawn into drug dealing.
Fr Séamus Ryan, parish priest in Ballyfermot, west Dublin, said Irish society needed to examine why so many men like Kenneth and Paul Corbally were being drawn into gangland crime.
“The deaths that Kenneth and Paul experienced were ones of savage cruelty on a roadside,” he told about 300 mourners at St Matthew’s Church in Ballyfermot on Saturday morning.
One comfort was that the crime was “so shocking as to make it completely unacceptable that people should be bent on settling scores” by taking the lives of enemies.
“We need to face the question of how is it that these young men . . . go down the road of the big bucks to be made in the drugs trade. They do not seem sufficiently aware of the evil ways to which they are being exposed and the harm done to others.”
The drugs trade was one of “tit- for-tat killing”.
Fr Ryan said some media reports suggested the “hired killers” were paid €40,000 and “a bonus” for the shooting.
“What are we letting ourselves into in our country, a huge sum of money to kill, and a bonus?” At one point a woman walked on to the altar and quietly asked Fr Ryan to desist from commenting any further about drugs. “They weren’t involved in drugs,” she said. Fr Ryan thanked her for her comments and continued his homily. At the end the service he apologised if he had caused offence.
During his homily, he said Archbishop Diarmuid Martin had in May concelebrated an annual Mass in St Matthew’s for families of those in Ballyfermot who had died through drug addiction.
He pointed to a remembrance wall in the church where the names of hundreds of the dead hung.
“We can only pray that the sad deaths of Paul and Kenneth may not have been entirely in vain and will serve as a sharp and necessary warning for any young people in danger of being sucked into the evil morass of the drugs trade.”
He said the Corbally brothers’ parents, Ann and Paddy, had lost two sons. Their sisters, Lorraine, Natalie and Ann Marie, had lost their brothers. Kenneth Corbally’s four children, the youngest of whom is four weeks old, had been left without a father.
Paul Corbally’s son, aged 15, and his stepdaughter had been left without a father. His wife, Catherine, had been widowed.
Kenneth (32) and Paul Corbally (35), originally from Drumfinn Avenue, Ballyfermot, died when their car was riddled with gunfire at around 8pm last Monday on Neilstown Road, Clondalkin.
A 14-year-old boy who was a back-seat passenger in the parked car sustained three gunshot wounds in the upper body. He was under armed guard in hospital for much of last week amid fears his life was in danger because he was the only witness to the double murder. He was discharged from hospital on Friday and is expected to make a full recovery.
Detectives are working on the theory that the Corballys and a number of their criminal associates had recently split from a wider drug dealing and armed robbery gang in west Dublin.
Tensions between the Corbally faction and their rivals had increased following a gang brawl outside a Ballyfermot pub last September when one of the Corballys’ associates was killed.
The Corbally faction had in recent weeks tried to shoot the leader of the other gang, but he escaped. They also recently stabbed a member of the other faction, although he survived.
Gardaí believe last Monday’s attack was the latest chapter in the ongoing dispute. It is feared the killings may result in a protracted feud between the gangs.