The support needs of family members affected by domestic homicide are among the key issues addressed in a new independent study published today by the Department of Justice.
It describes those bereaved by domestic homicide and familicide as being "traumatised" by the experience.
The report includes powerful testimony from close family members who have experienced domestic homicide or familicide.
Noreen recalled: "There was this air of quiet. Nobody, you know … you'd imagine you would all just burst out crying and you would be hysterical.
"But we weren’t. We were all just dumbstruck. Shook up. We just held each other."
Niamh told the study team: "I was in complete shock, I really didn’t know what to do."
Declan described it as "finding yourself alone and isolated ... the chilling, chilling experience."
Valerie recalled: "I actually think that my body was sent into shock and that I couldn’t feel anything.
"I wasn’t allowed visit home because [the victims] were still there, waiting for the State Pathologist to come."
Pauline explained: "We weren't just fit for … we were being lifted from A to B - there is anger, there is grief and there is pain."
Families also recounted the fear they felt faced with the task of identifying their deceased loved ones who have died in very difficult circumstances.
Declan explained: "I identified [victim’s] body a few hours after. I know the macabre, bone chilling details of how she died."
For some, there was the trauma of seeing their loved ones with terrible injuries.
Wendy told the study team: "There are nights that [the victim] in the morgue haunts me."
One family member struggled with how she should engage in this forensic environment, which was unlike a wake or a funeral home.
"I asked could we bring flowers, anything, up there," she said. "They said no, we could bring nothing."
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Families reported having no private space to gather before or after identifying the body and having to walk out into the night, alone and unsupported.
In further testimony, Declan spoke of that moment: "I came running out of the hospital.
"Someone from the hospital, I don’t know if it was a nurse, maybe it was, said that you know the HSE will support you in counselling services.
"But I needed the services there and then."
For some family members, the local schools were identified as having an important role in providing a venue where support could be provided to children, parents and teachers in the immediate aftermath.
Laura praised the National Education Psychologist Service (NEPS): "I think it was absolutely fantastic what NEPS did.
"[They] were brilliant in giving the support that was needed. They also came up to the house to be there for any of the kids. They went over and above."
A woman whose family died in a murder-suicide in 2010 said she believes her children would be alive today had she been involved in her husband's treatment.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Una Butler said she is "disgusted" that today's report does not make recommendations around mental health and family involvement.
She said her husband, John, suffered with mental health issues before he murdered their daughters, Zoe (6) and Ella (2) on 16 November 2010. He then took his own life.
Ms Butler has campaigned for the Mental Health Act 2001 to be amended so that patient treatment would include family involvement.
Parents do not live in isolation and should not be treated as such, she said.
Ms Butler said she was aware that her husband was seeking treatment, but that she felt excluded from this.
"I got all his notes but never found out why he was depressed," she said. "I never believed until that day that he could have carried out such an act."
