ANN TRAVERS HAS said she “hopes” President Catherine Connolly can use her “influence” to broker a meeting with the woman convicted in relation to her sister’s murder.

Travers’s sister Mary was killed by the Provisional IRA in an attack in April 1984, in which her father Tom Travers was also shot six times.

Mary McArdle was convicted for her role in the murder of 23-year-old teacher and is the only person to have been convicted in relation to the attack.

McArdle served 14 years in prison before being released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

President Connolly was recently photographed with McArdle while at a press event at a women’s centre on the Falls Road in Belfast.

Travers said it was “difficult” to see Connolly “smiling” for a photograph with McArdle, and added that the backdrop of a woman’s shelter was “ironic”.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Today with Sharon Tobin, Travers added: “The fact it was outside a women’s centre, which I’m sure is there to help women through all sorts, and then I just think about the violence that happened to my own beautiful 23-year-old sister and my mother on that day.”

Earlier this month, Travers sent a letter to Connolly’s office in relation to the photograph.

She yesterday received an email to say Connolly “would be glad to meet with you privately when that is convenient”.

Travers said she hopes to have this private meeting next month.

When asked on RTÉ’s Today show what she hopes to say to Connolly during their meeting, Travers said: “I just hope that by the end of it she understands the impact that victims and survivors live with daily.

“I really hope that she can maybe have some kind of influence on Mary McArdle to meet with me and give me the answers I so need.

“I’ve asked to meet Mary McArdle a few times and she’s said no, so I’m hoping that President Connolly will be able to have some kind of influence on her.”

File image of Ann Travers Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Meanwhile, Travers said it was “so hurtful” to see Connolly beside McArdle.

“Mary McArdle is entitled to go on with her life, I don’t give her a second thought any day of the week, but when I see her standing beside our president, I just thought, ‘what on earth? What’s going on?’”

Travers added that McArdle has “shown absolutely no remorse ever since” and that she is “the only person who can help us and tell us who exactly was involved in my sister’s murder”.

She added: “I think for President Connolly, it’s very important that those who are in power and can do things… instead of standing beside killers, they need to start standing beside the victims and survivors of the Troubles.”

When it was put to Travers that the president “has to meet everybody as part of diplomacy”, Travers replied: “Absolutely, but I think there should be an awareness of photographs and putting them out publicly.”

She added: “It brings home that victims and survivors have had to fight and push for absolutely everything. We’re constantly being re-traumatised.

“There seems to be this attitude that it’s all over now, the Good Friday Agreement happened, let’s just move on.

“I love my country, I love Ireland, but I want there to be this understanding.

“It’s very important for our future, so it never happens ever again, to understand the impact of what terrorism does and the forever trauma it leaves on people.”

‘She was so innocent’

Speaking on the 1984 attack, Travers said her parents and sister had attended Mass in Belfast and were walking home.

“They were about 200 yards from our house.

“They were very happy, Mary was in her first teaching job and was bringing her class for their first confession that day in preparation to make their First Holy Communion.”

Travers said they were talking about First Holy Communion preparation when “they heard a gunshot”.

She said that when her father turned around, “he saw a man waving his hand under a newspaper”.

“Dad said to him, ‘What do you want?’

“And the man replied, ‘It’s you that we want’.”

Her mother then spotted a second gunman across the street.

“With that, that gunman shot Mary once in the back, and she fell down into my mum’s arms and knocked Mum onto the ground,” said Travers.

“Dad was shot six times by the other gunman and the gunman that shot Mary walked over to my mum and put the gun to my mum’s head and pulled the trigger twice, but twice the gun jammed.

“They ran off and handed their guns over to Mary McArdle.”

Travers’s father was a resident magistrate – this role has since been renamed as “District Judges”.

District Judges deal with both criminal and civil cases.

While the IRA said the intended target was Tom Travers, Ann Travers told RTÉ that the Historical Enquiries Team found that the IRA “wanted to murder as many of the Travers family as possible on that day”.

“You don’t bring two gunmen out to shoot one man,” said Travers, “and you don’t have a gunman shoot a young 23-year-old, 5ft 4in, seven stone woman in the back.

“So I believe that they went out to try to murder all of us.”

She said her father had a police radio for security, but that he “refused to take a gun because he knew he could never use it on anybody”.

She said he also refused a police bodyguard “because he couldn’t live with himself if someone lost their husband or father because he was protecting my dad”.

Travers added that she missed her “beautiful sister Mary every single solitary day”.

“I think about her every day, and she helps me every day, I pray to her every day. She just was so wonderful and so innocent.”