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Irish Daily Mirror
6 days ago
- Business
- Irish Daily Mirror
Search for hero Irish giant's bones rocked by DNA twist
The expensive excavation project to bring Irish historical hero Patrick Sarsfield back home to Ireland needs an urgent investment of funds, it has emerged. Some supporters fear it could be in danger of stalling due to finances - leaving organisers hoping for a rich benefactor or a private company to step in. Sarsfield, the 1st Earl of Lucan, famously led the resistance of Irish Catholics in Limerick against England's King William III in 1690. The Irish Mirror reported in 2022 that excavations to find the skeletal remains of 17th Century earl Patrick, who was literally a giant of his age, measuring an estimated 6' 6', was to begin in Belgium. Limerick University's Dr Loic Guyon, who founded the Sarsfield Homecoming Project in 2020, said: "We hope to raise around €45,000, with a minimum of €20,000 by mid-August, at the latest. I hope someone with means, or a private company, might read the press articles and offer to help us to keep the project going as the amount of funding still needed to complete it is quite significant.' Dr Guyon explained: 'The cost of the operation is unfortunately going to be much higher than anticipated. Instead of [the original cost] sum for €40,000, additional measures will now require approximately €70,000." Dr Guyon said: 'Fortunately, we recently received a very generous donation from a company based in Limerick. We currently have about €54,000 left in our budget. But it is not enough to pay for the works or the many trips and tests that our team will need. We hope that we might be able to raise the further €45,000 which we estimate necessary to pay the building company and complete the project. 'We are at a critical point of the project. If we don't manage to raise an absolute minimum of €20,000 by mid-August at the latest, the Sarsfield Homecoming Project will be stalled for the first time since its launch in 2020.' He added: 'Hundreds of people have kindly donated to the project via our Go Fund Me Page.' The Go Fund Me Page called Help Us Bring Patrick Sarsfield Back to Ireland has a €70,000 fundraising goal and has so far raised €24,855. You can visit the page here. Historians say Sarsfield prevented the total destruction of Limerick – which has named a bridge, a bank and a square in his honour – before he fled to France with King James Stuart II after the 1690 Battle of the Boyne. In France, Sarsfield became Field Marshal of the army of King Louis XIV and died fighting in 1693 during the battle of Landen-Neerwinden and is buried in Huy, Belgium. His exact burial location has been a mystery for hundreds of years but Loic Guyon, the Honorary Consul of France to Ireland, launched an extraordinary project in 2020 to find his resting place. Dr Guyon found a first mention of the death of Earl Lucan Sarsfield in a document of August 13, 1693, that specified that he died from his injuries in Huy 'where he had been taken'. He believes Sarsfield was buried in the grounds of the old Saint-Martin church, which is to be an abandoned housing area, and has pinpointed the grave site at 21 Avenue des Fossés. The entire avenue was bought by the authorities of Huy to transform it into a future administrative centre – but have agreed first to carry out an archaeological dig of the site. Agreement has already been reached that if the remains in Huy are that of Sarsfield, then he will be repatriated to Limerick. To get the DNA, Dr Guyon mapped the Sarsfield family tree to trace his descendants and found Timothy Sarsfield in Cork whose DNA has been provided to allow genetic matching. However, there was disappointing news last week when DNA tests produced an unexpected setback. Male skeletal remains which were discovered at the Huy site in January were found to be those of local men. Dr Guyon said: 'One of them was particularly tall, especially for that period, which made us think that he could have been Patrick Sarsfield. But the DNA results are clear. None of the two skeletons was that of an Irishman.' Dr Guyon now hopes that the search can be expanded to the back garden of the church after Huy City Council granted permission to his team. He said: 'This represents a big challenge in administrative, financial and technical terms.'
Irish Independent
08-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Independent
Luckless Drogheda ladies come up just shy again in water polo's Irish Senior Cup Finals
Having under-performed by their own standards early on in the season due to missing a number of key players, the Drogheda outfit began to find their form in recent months as they picked up a number of notable wins in the run-up to the 'Diamond Event', the Irish Senior Cup Finals. The tournament was held in Limerick University, with a total of 14 teams involved between men's and ladies. It all started off well enough for Drogheda as, after being paired off against one of their many old rivals North Dublin, the Boynesiders prevailed 12-6 thanks to a well-executed team plan. Next was a match versus Tribes of Galway who entered the competition as one of the most in-form teams in the country, on the back of a very impressive run of eight wins and just one loss. It was in this encounter that Drogheda unfortunately were outplayed and so they secured 'only' the runners-up position in Group B and therefore had to face Group A winners St Vincents in the semi-finals. This was a highly anticipated match in light of the fact that Drogheda knocked them out at the same stage in 2024 following a penalty shootout, but this time the Boynesiders were beaten by a better team who went on to win the competition and record their 12th triumph in the last 13 Irish Senior Cup finals. Still, Drogheda can look forward with optimism to the 2025/26 season which will see the return of some pivotal stalwarts. Perhaps that will boost their chances of finally going all the way in the Irish Senior Cup, having contested four of the last five finals. The Drogheda senior ladies squad are always looking for new players, as are the junior ranks of the Drogheda underage club who train in Aura in Drogheda on a Monday night.
Irish Independent
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Comedian Aoife Dunne: ‘Coming to terms with my mother's death helped me live closer to life'
Dunne (38), from Kinvara, Co Galway, is set to perform at the Ambassador Theatre in Dublin in September with her show Good Grief, after only a year-and-a-half of gigging. She has recently performed at the Brighton Fringe Festival, with plenty of comedy clubs and storytelling events under her belt. It is a special moment for the self-proclaimed 'talker' who dreamed of being on stage as a child. But, as she put it: 'My life hasn't been just a barrel of laughs.' She has an arts degree and a master's in human rights law and trained in acting until she was 19, but Dunne felt stuck in life for many years after a family tragedy. While backpacking in South America at 23 years old, she received the worst phone call imaginable. Her mother had died suddenly at the age of 53. In a letter she wrote to her younger self, which she incorporates into her shows, she explains that time is the greatest healer. I know how bad it can be and I know how dark things can be 'I know this sounds weird, but Mom dying and me coming to terms with death has helped me live closer to life. And it wasn't this immediate, 'oh my God, life's amazing'. It's hard,' she said. 'When someone tells me they're going through any kind of grief, it's so important to say, this is awful. I think we have this tendency when someone tells you something sad to try to either push it to the side or have this tendency to say, 'don't cry'. 'Those are good things too. But in the moment, it's important to be sad.' Dunne's father had left the family years before, although she has since reconciled with him. ADVERTISEMENT But the single-parent household meant that in her early 20s, she suddenly became the stand-in parent to her two younger brothers and her older sister with an intellectual disability. Her shows are full of laughter as well as stories of her struggles. 'I am so present with things, and I think that's only because I know how bad it can be and I know how dark things can be. And so that's made me understand the lightness even more, she said. A stand-out moment in our chat was when she recalled putting tan on her brother Féidhlim, who was competing in a bodybuilding competition at 19. 'I went to this conference at Limerick University with Féidhlim. And I just walked around, seeing all these grown men and women tanned up to see all their muscles. He looked incredible, my brother really put a lot of work into it,' she said. 'But his bum needs to be tanned beforehand to show up the muscle, so there I am tanning his gluteal muscle thinking OK, this is my life now, and one of my friends who I studied acting with [Nicola Coughlan] is in Bridgerton. 'I didn't realise it's like an All-Ireland hurling final, people stand up and they're screaming. I realise he has no one else here to support him, but I don't necessarily want to be like screaming to my half-naked brother. 'But I also thought how Mom's not here to do it now. So, I jump up shouting 'Come on, Féidhlim'.' I know this sounds strange, but this is destiny Dunne's new tour is about life's absurdities, the mistakes we all make and why the path you're on is the right path. She took hold of her own path at 35 when she started therapy and began focusing on making her dream a reality. Then in 2023, she spoke at a storytelling event before attending a four-day storytelling course in Dún Laoghaire. Opportunities began to snowball from there. 'I posted one of my stories online and then Katie Boyle [a US-based Irish comic] got in touch and asked if I wanted to do a story in New York. After New York, I was asked to do the Galway Comedy Festival,' she said. 'What I say to people is that after that, every time I did something, another door flung open. All I could think was, I know this sounds strange, but this is destiny.' Dunne plays the Ambassador Theatre, Dublin, on September 20, along with Cyprus Avenue, Cork, on September 27 and the Limelight, Belfast, on October 11. She will also be performing at the Galway Arts Festival in July. Check out @aoife_is_never_dunne on Instagram.
