TEEMORE SHAMROCKS GAA has urged members of the Fermanagh community to support the Quinn family as it deals with what the club calls “unreasonable and outrageous treatment”.
The football club, where the Quinns have been important members for many years, said it wanted to “go on record” as being “fully behind” the family.
In a statement published on its website, Teemore Shamrocks said it could not express enough gratitude to the family “for what they have done for our community over the years”.
We encourage our fellow Gaels, sports people, community people, and those who have crossed paths with members of the Quinn Family in the past, to realise the injustice inflicted on the Quinn Family and urge you to support the family in the midst of their unreasonable and outrageous treatment.
The club’s history is speckled with Quinn folklore. In the 1950s, Peter Quinn (father to missing Peter Darragh) broke onto the senior football scene, becoming an important player and eventually captained the team to championship glory in 1969 after a barren 34 years.
In 1990, the same man was named as the GAA’s president, the highest position in the association. He held the office from 1991 to 1994, during which Northern Ireland football had once of its greatest eras of all time with All-Ireland wins fro Down, Derry and Donegal.
However, the reason the Quinn family is making headlines today is far from those heady heights of the early 1990s. A countrywide search for the former GAA star’s son Peter Darragh continues after he failed to turn up for a scheduled appearance at the High Court last Friday. Despite his absence, he was sentenced to three months in prison for contempt and a warrant for his arrest was subsequently issued by Justice Elizabeth Dunne.
No trace of the 34-year-old has been reported since. The Gardaí can only work within their own jurisdiction and if he has travelled outside of Ireland, they cannot force him to return. Gardaí told TheJournal.ie this afternoon that there was no update on the search, adding that they could not comment on operational matters in relation to the search.
Peter Darragh’s cousin, Seán Quinn Jr, is currently serving his matching three-month jail term at Mountjoy Prison’s low-security training unit.
His father, Ireland’s one-time richest man, has told BBC Northern Ireland’s Julian Fowler in an interview that he would gladly trade places with his son. Quinn Senior avoided jail but has been given three months to co-operate with his company’s former lender, Anglo Irish Bank (now the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation), and reverse steps taken to keep millions of euro of assets out of its reach.
Quinn has insisted that he has not seen his nephew sine last Friday. “He found himself in a situation where he knew they wanted him in prison,” he told the BBC. “The fear of jail concerned him more than me or Sean.”
During the interview, he also said that he feels he has an obligation to defend his principles, family and region from “the injustice that has been done”.
The Irish Government is currently working with the IBRC and a number of foreign administrations in the hope of recovering a number of assets owned by the Quinn group.
Over the past two days, a number of high-profile court hearings have seen three top executives from the now-defunct Anglo Irish Bank charged over financial irregularities, including giving unlawful financial assistance to members of the Quinn family.
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