Democrat Editorial: Inishowen braced for toll of familiar haunting bells

Familiar bells will toll in Inishowen on Friday.

Alana Harkin and Thomas Gallagher, a pair of 18-year-olds in the primes of their lives, were killed just after midnight on Monday in a single-vehicle crash near Gleneely.

Their funerals take place on Friday. Many of the same mourners will make their way from the Funeral Mass of Alana Harkin at St Mary’s Church, Bocan, Culdaff to St. Mary's Church, Ballybrack, Moville, where the Funeral Mass will take place of Thomas Gallagher.

Raw emotion that has been all too familiar over the last 20 years swept across the Inishowen peninsula as it woke for another on Monday to its latest road tragedy.

At Monday morning Mass in Moville, Fr Eddie Gallagher remarked that a ‘veil of sorrow’ was over the area.

Inishowen has known a share of tragedy greater than most. At road and at sea, the peninsula - strong in its independence, fierce in its isolation - has had to overcome a series of devastating incidents.

In one 18-month period during 2004 and 2005, 18 people were killed on Inishowen’s roads. In July 2010, on another stretch of the R238 road near Clonmany, eight people were killed in what remains the worst crash in the history of the State.

This week, some mother’s son and another mother’s daughter were placed in hearses, the sixth and seventh people to lose their lives on Donegal’s roads in 2023.

Inishowen is known for being tight-knit and in Gleneely the bonds are tighter still. The small community has been rocked to its very core this week.

Oftentimes, Inishowen can seem like a forgotten part of Donegal; adjoined by land yet unique in its own right.

This week, Donegal stands united in solidarity and sorrow with a grief-stricken community that lost two young souls as they made their way home from work.