Mr O’Connell indicated they had not been approached previously or been the subject of any visit from gardaí.He also described “serious concerns” about aspects of media coverage related to the arrests, including attempts to photograph “someone who has not been charged with an offence” upon release.
“I remember people, and when my beautiful daughter was quite small, and to the 1980s, saying, ‘And oh you kept the baby.’ And I would say: ‘I decided to have a child.’ “You couldn’t get contraception except in a kind of lying or hypocritical type of scenario. I remember going to my GP and saying I had an upset menstrual cycle and could I have the pill, please?
Ms Hayes found herself at the centre of the Kerry Babies Tribunal in 1985 and was subjected to five days of cross-examination. The sadness in relation to the wrongdoing inflicted on Hayes, who was wrongfully accused of the murder of Baby John, is still palpable in Kerry.On Friday afternoon on Talkabout with Deirdre Walsh, on Radio Kerry, the presenter said that they had received a message from a listener who expressed the opinion that references made to Joanne Hayes in the national media were “out of order”.