BBC News Monday Aug 30, 2002 Maureen Kearney was the IRA's most vocal critic in their own heartland by Malachi O'Doherty Maureen Kearney wasn't looking well in June when she came up to Stormont. The world's press was there for the supposed final talks on devolution and  disarmament, and she saw it as a chance to get her message out to the world  that her son had been murdered by the IRA. She brought a large framed  photograph of Andrew, and she held it before every camera that would come  near her, and gave interviews about Andrew's death to journalists and spoke  to politicians. She was on her feet all day, looking pale and thin. She was the IRA's most vocal critic in their own heartland. She went on  living in Twinbrook. She urged Sinn Fein to get her an answer to why the  killing had happened and she was granted a meeting with the Belfast  leadership of the Provisionals. They apologised to her. The plan, they said, had not been to kill Andrew but to cripple him. They  had shot him in the knees and left him to bleed to death in a jammed lift.  The IRA apology explained that a volunteer should not have pulled out the  phone cable and made it impossible for his partner to get help to him on  time. But although Maureen knew that the IRA had killed her son, and said she knew  from Connolly House in advance of the killing that he was to be attacked,  the funeral mass made no reference to the IRA. The Bishop indeed said the  killing called for reflective silence. This was July 1998. It was the first IRA murder after the Good Friday  Agreement, and the political consequences were potentially severe, and  apparently still potentially avoidable. Maureen must have died wondering how it can be that one murder and not  another can be the centre of political argument. There was no review of the  cease-fire after Andrew was killed. There was no political crisis. Indeed, the men who killed Andrew Kearney and Charles Bennett must wonder  why one murder creates such a fuss and another does not, even why the whole  political process seems to revolve around one expulsion order while hundreds  of others pass without a mention. When hopes are high of political progress murders are overlooked, and those  who make a fuss about them are thought mischievous or naïve. These things  happen, and the way to stop them happening is to overlook them for now and  trust that politics will overtake them. When hopes of political progress are low, then the carnage we have turned a  blind eye to comes back and appals us. Martin McGuinness tells us that the way to put the violence of an imperfect  cease-fire behind us is to implement the Good Friday Agreement, and hold  everyone but himself to their commitments. Does he believe that if the  Executive had been formed in July 98, Andrew Kearney would not have been  killed, that if it had been formed in July 99, Charles Bennett would not  have been killed? I doubt it. Like the Bishops he asks us to live in hope and stay our anger.  Then one day there will be peace and good order and we'll be glad we said  nothing when Andrew Kearney died. Monsignor Denis Faul asked last week why the Bishops of Ireland were not  stating the case as plainly as John Taylor was that working class people  were being terrorised. No answer yet from the bishops. Perhaps they will give us one at Maureen's  funeral.  ______________________________ The preceding was a commentary broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback  Programme, Monday, August 30, following the death of Maureen Kearney, mother  of Andrew Kearney, murdered by the IRA in July 1998.