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MARK BURKE WAS last seen in Dun Laoghaire at 2pm on 28 July 2014, his remains appeared on a skip in a Ballyfermot recycling centre three days later.
His father, Noel Burke, has made an emotional appeal to the public to help find his son’s killers who have not been brought to justice.
Speaking on Liveline, Burke described how, “Mark was a lovely boy, he grew up and never gave me any bother, went to work and everything.
“He was a normal young fellow but he just closed the curtains one day. Mark has seven beautiful children and a partner that would have him back tomorrow.
He suffered from depression, he just closed the curtains and started drinking. We had him in everywhere … he wouldn’t talk to any psychiatrist.
“He became homeless when he was around 30 – he wasn’t the Mark that we knew, that we raised.”
Burke added that his son was “known to gardaí but for nothing bad … for robbing cans or not paying on the Luas”.
Mark wasn’t involved in any criminality, he was a nuisance more than anything else.
Gentle Giant
“[There was] something was in the back of my brain that I hadn’t seen him so I went out to look for him.”
Burke said that it wouldn’t be unusual for Mark to go missing for weeks on end but he became concerned when he heard about the reports.
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“It came up on Crimecall, the remains of a man aged between 30-50. It said the normal things to identify Mark, like his hands or his teeth weren’t there.”
Burke said he knew it was Mark when he heard that the man found at Thorntons recycling facility had had brain surgery.
It was the brain thing … because of his height and because Mark had surgery.
“I went down to the gardaí and asked them if they’d check the remains, they took a swab from his mother and it was Mark.”
Mark had received brain surgery after he was badly beaten, Burke said his son was regularly beaten but never spoke about it.
Although Mark was six foot, he wouldn’t be able to defend himself, his mind wasn’t in the right pace.
“He was too afraid to speak out – he was a gentle giant yah know.”
‘It never leaves you’
In an emotional appeal for information about his son’s murder, Noel said:
“It never leaves you … you can’t even get half an hour. ‘What if, why did they do that to Mark? He was harmless’.
Burke described how the killers poured acid like a strong vinegar on Mark to cover up any smell, adding:
This person or persons have to be caught because they will do it again, whoever it is.
“I just plead with anyone around Dun Laoghaire – did they see him or hear of anything?”
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@honey badger: FG promising to help the hospitality sector when they just shafted it in the recent budget. And FF promising to enact the Occupied Territories Bill when they’ve stalled it for the last 5 years. But tell me again how it’s all Sinn Féin’s fault!!!
@Anthony Curran: The hospitality sector shafted itself. They didn’t pass on the reduction in Vat to the customer did they? But they were very quick to pass on in increase when the Vat went back to where it should be. I’ve no sympathy for them.
@Anthony Curran: FG wants us now to believe it FF to blame for not reducing the vat rate to 9%, the mud slinging and the blame game has started interesting 21 days ahead.
@Anthony Curran: SF/PIRA killed the tourist and hospitality sector in NI and the border counties for four decades. That was justified until Adams and McGuinness became MLA and took the Queen’s shilling.
Ms McDonald has insulted to Irish electorate by allowing the back room boys from up North to send down Donnelly ( aka O’Donnghaile ) as leader of The Seanad and Hughes ( “The Surgeon” ) from SouthArmagh to revive SF in Laois. She is a front for a Northern Ireland party.
@Vincent Alexander: I think it’s pretty insulting of FFG to be promising lowering the hospitality VAT rate and promising to enact the Occupied Territories Bill when they’ve just f..ked the hospitality sector in the budget a couple of weeks ago and let the Bill gather dust for the last 5 years! Who do they think they’re kidding?!!!
@Anthony Curran: time to bring back internment for the shinner vermin, a cage has always been the best place for a shinner. Would you leave your child alone with a shinner?
Keeping Ireland on its upward trajectory is best assured by it being in the hands of either FG or FF who have a proven record rather than dangerous leftist experimentation with has proven disastrous outcomes in many countries.
Oh yeah those disastrous lefties in Norway have really up-ended the place. They even had the nerve to use their own natural resources to benefit it’s own people. We CANNOT let the crazy left stand up to the corporate interests that are so dear to the hearts of FFGers like Tom here
@thomas molloy: health system – failed. Housing – failed. Transport – failed, protection of children – failed, I could go on and for hours about the Failures of Fg and FF.
@Ger Whelan: You must still be dependent on RTÉ for cancelled version of world news. Get a satellite dish and try real news. Also the world is not flat.
@Liam23: Their wages are also far higher than Ireland. The difference between incoming outgoings allow Norwegian workers a far superior lifestyle to Ireland. The cost of a pint shouldn’t be the standard by which you calculate successful economies.
@thomas molloy: Don’t need RTE to tell me anything about what I just said. Care to tell me how anything I said is wrong?. Come on Thomas please correct me in what I said was wrong and give examples?.
@Vincent Alexander: Where did I say to Vote for SF. But while you’re talking about child protection go look at how many children that were in the care of our government under Tulsa that were missing and how many haven’t been found. So clearly you won’t for Fg or FF or the greens if child protection is all you consider.
@james rowan: The world wide financial crisis nearly wiped out our banking systems but Brian Lenehan FF refinanced the banks and saved our economy. His strategy was admired and copied internationally. It was pressure from the left that encouraged reckless banking practices, lend everyone a million’ don’t be stingy which created the credit bubble.
@Liam23: true but the people are not struggling to survive like we are. They don’t have to pay banks from all across Europe for the European crash and not just our own! We are paying for 42% of the total losses of banks not just the ones we cost.
@Paul M Doe: Actually we are paying 42% of all the banks losses across Europe and it has nothing to do with the underclasses. But it was the greedy builders and developers and banks that caused the crash!
@thomas molloy: It had nothing to do with the left. We were hung out to dry by the IMF and EU.
Conor Lenihan was a great politician and a lovely person, but he was never in a million years a Minister for Finance. he was put there to make him struggle and look bad!
Why are we inflicted with posters of Haircut Harris when he’s not even standing in our area??
This practice should be banned.
Also FF & FG posters on ESB poles which is totally illegal!
The Greens, PBP, Labour wiped out. Irish people do not support Communists. Sinn Féin on life support. Was not going to vote but will vote Aontu as the best of a bad lot.
@Paul M Doe: it sure is buddy. You seem to think I care about the SF party. I do not. But while having an public enquiry into SF can we also have a Public enquiry into the 3 parties who are in government to explain how so many kids went missing from social services under their term in government. Go look at how many kids they lost and more shockingly how many they haven’t actually found. All our political parties should be held accountable don’t you think?
Serious questions remain from SF, who authorised the moving of that POS from NI to this country, not only move him here but put him in a position in the Seanad, guess what position?
@Paul M Doe: No, just politicians. The GP are even more affected because they were spoilt by getting their own way the whole time due to the fear that FF and FG have of SF. But once the election was called anyway and the Dail dissolved, FF and FG have no further need of them, and they are now throwing the rattler out of the pram.
Still looking for civilized political party who doesn’t support Palestinian and Hezbollah terrorists. Supporting Islamists will invite them into Ireland in huge numbers – you like and support us – so here we are! With such madness around there is no question wether Ireland will become an islamic country it’s about after how many years! Politicians who supporting this often have no children due to sexual orientation so they don’t really care about fundamental things – just to stay in power for some time in order to grab enormous salary/pension.
@Sergej Simonov: You should probably fk off to the airport and find somewhere else to live. Decent Irish people don’t support Hamas or Hezbollah or any of those terrorists but support the ordinary Palestinian people and their right to exist withiut being slaughtered and to have a homeland of their own.
@Sergej Simonov: Oh do one you apologist for genocide. Ireland suffered from ethnic cleansing and genocide. That’s why we side with the Palestinian people. It’s nothing to do with religion. It’s everything to do with Zionist white supremacism. Free Palestine x
@Ian: Ordinary Palestinian teaching their children hatred and terrorism/jihad in crèches. 99.9% of Palestinians support terrorists – otherwise they will be murdered on the spot!
@Sergej Simonov: The Israelis have literally been teaching their kids that Palestinians are less than human and to be exterminated. See the last 76 years of Palestinian extermination.
@Ian: Just Google birth rate in Gaza! They breed faster than any other nation getting everything for free from Israel and other countries! Better tell wat Palestinians produce except born terrorists, hostage takers, tunnel diggers…?! That is why they go to work in Israel because there is nothing at home but conveyer producing terrorists.
FG FF GP have shown nothing but contempt and arrogance to the Irish people during the term of the outgoing Government . They’ve been concerned only with looking after Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers . I wish we had a Government that put Irish people first in their own country .
@Jim Ryan: put the Irish people first in their own country. Yet you’ll be the first to discriminate against the Irish LGBTQ community. Sure no double standards from you is there?
So MM thinks the Occupied Territories Bill is important and should be prioritised by the next government. Fair enough. Remind me again who has consistently used a money message technicality to block the enactment of this Bill that has already passed both houses? Same fella! You’d have to be stupid to believe him again this time
@Darth O’Leary: maybe go check facts before u comment, its a big deal from an Irish Government but it has to be exactly right (which most Irish people want) or we will end up like France where it was rejected, it can’t be pushed through on a whim,
@Sheila McNulty: They’ve had 6 years Sheila. 6 years. They’re more afraid of upsetting the American genocide enablers. If they cared about the Palestinian people who have been slaughtered like animals in an abattoir, then this Bill would have been law a long time ago. F… Zionism. Free Palestine.
If a party has been in power for four years (or more) and is making promises on the eve of an election which they’ve already had ample time to implement it really gives the impression of a snake oil salesman.
FG are the runation of this beautiful country imported freeloaders exported educated talented youth, who will never buy a house in Ireland and sold off all our assets for no return and there business buddies getting fatter by the day, I plead with the people do not vote for a shower who think a bike shed at 360k plus vat is value for money please cop on at the ballot box
They had their chance to reduce hospitality vat rate to 9% in Budget 2025 but they didn’t, So how come they are able to drop it to 11% in an election bluff to get back in and ride the taxpayer further.
Paul Murphy is right on this occasion… MLM has missed a trick here. The best chance SF has for a successful election here is to offer the electorate an alternative to FFG with a left coalition. The amount of apathy and the sense of resignation around this election already is staggering. In the past people flip flopped between FF and FG, believing they were voting for change or giving the government of the day a kick up the backside. Since they’ve essentially amalgamated this is no longer possible.. SF can’t afford to be stuck in no man’s land here, it’s a weak position to hold and will be read as such by the electorate. And sure just like MM before the last election.. she can always lie about it… doesn’t seem to have him any harm with the electorate.
@Kevin Kerr: The mute button is a wonderful thing Kevin.. I count 8 different iterations of DumbDoes accounts I’ve muted now.. he just keeps following me around like a little puppy desperate for my attention.. The only thing you can do with these trolls is deny them the thing they crave the most.. attention.
Why is it not in the public domain that I Gorman was caught on video breaking the law been helped by the guards to break same law by sticking up his unwanted posters well before it was called bet he ll get away with it
This is ridiculous, these Parties are just playing around with Policies and Politics to grab headlines. FG have been in Power and despite the calls to lower the VAT Rate, they did nothing by claiming it would create too much of a loss for the Exchequer, what’s changed over 24 hours. As well as that, lowering the VAT Rate will do nothing to help the Finances of the hard pressed Buisness, as it will save them nothing, it just means Businesses will take less VAT from their Customers to pass on to the Exchequer. Instead why not give the help where it counts, give a VAT Exemption on say the first €100K of Turnover, Reduce Employers PRSI, take the VAT charged on Electricity, Gas and Heating Fuel down to 5%, and cut Rates by 50%. Measures such as these would give real savings to Businesses.
I despise the Greens & ROG, but as much as I do, I have to admit they are correct about Fianna Fail, a party & a leader who would get into bed with Idi Amin, just to be in power. I believe in Retrofitting, Environment, Recycling, Biodiversity but lost all belief in this Green Party who forgot all that, did fuk all to help & incentivize working families & lost the people with their concentration on their Woke agenda. Ideally both parties would be wiped out in this election. But unfortunately people vote FF because their father & grandfather did, even with Thicks like Mr. Votegate going for election.
The nonsense continues. How does reducing a tax paid by consumers benefit suppliers. Is what they really mean that suppliers keep the prices they have that includes a higher rate ov VAT but that they pocket the difference by not passing on the reduction?
I’d call that cheating!
The 100 years of ff and fg have given us half written laws that fail people, made medical needs of citizens worse than they were when the nuns ran them, they made housing a scandal of crisis levels because non citizens can bulk buy houses thanks to fg. Disabled services are so deficient nothing changed since the 1979’s.
However the carbon tax is being paid by the citizen because other countries around the globe pollute and do not pay any tax. Following the ideology of the carbon experiment cannot be blamed on the greens but on the individual in the Norway and Finland experimental centres.
What do we want for our country. I want better services for the disabled, a better health system and house purchase potential for our youth. I cannot see ff and fg delivering on those after eight years working together
All left wing parties with your woke ideologies, and economic airy fairy mandates can go fall off a cliff hopefully. Take your ZERO science climate cult with you
Ryan has destroyed the country, ff& fg should be ashamed to include him in the Govt last time out just to have a majority, Greens will get No seat’s this time around, they will dissapere like the PD’s years ago.
I’ll vote for whoever is the most fiscally responsible. We have seen who the US have voted for and what his plans are and yet not one party is even hinting that our tax take may be decimated over the coming years if the US reduce their CT to 15%.
are these muppets winding us up. they told us the last time they wouldnt go into government together but when they didn’t get enough votes all of a sudden they would from a collation. now there is a general election called they are slattin each other again and we all know they will do the same again to remain in power. bunch of hypocrites
Sutka spruce forests in Ireland lock up massive amounts of carbon. The Green destruction of the Forest industry has effectively stopped the planting of spruce. 90% of the land we once could plant is now blocked. So ireland won’t meet carbon targets and will be fined.
The damage these ideologues have caused is staggering. Common sense and compromise is not on their lexicon
Please don’t vote Green.
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