{"id":485447,"date":"2026-03-20T07:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T07:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/485447\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T07:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T07:46:09","slug":"buncrana-louise-james-who-lost-five-family-members-in-drowning-wants-surviving-daughter-to-live-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/485447\/","title":{"rendered":"Buncrana: Louise James who lost five family members in drowning wants surviving daughter to ‘live life’"},"content":{"rendered":"

An inquest into the deaths was held at the end of 2017 and the jury found the family had drowned due to misadventure.<\/p>\n

A garda (Irish police officer) told the inquest the slipway was “extremely slippery with thick algae”.<\/p>\n

“I’m angry because the slipway wasn’t cleaned,” Louise said.<\/p>\n

“It should have been cleaned. If it had been cleaned then this wouldn’t have happened. <\/p>\n

“It’s full of algae and precautions should have been put in place for every slipway to be cleaned. <\/p>\n

“There’s no individual that’s responsible for this. <\/p>\n

“If the council had cleaned it then it would have been prevented.”<\/p>\n

In response to a request for comment, Donegal County Council directed the BBC to the Donegal Coroner’s office.<\/p>\n

At the time, the council<\/a> said that when “the facts surrounding this unfortunate tragedy are established, the council will review them and determine if any specific measures need to be taken”.<\/p>\n

The inquest also heard Sean McGrotty had a blood alcohol level of 159mg<\/a>, above the Republic of Ireland’s drink-driving limit of 50mg.<\/p>\n

However, a pathologist told the inquest she could not say what level of impairment a driver with that level of alcohol could have.<\/p>\n

The jury also recommended that Irish Water Safety take a prominent role with other agencies in implementing best practice in relation to safety at piers and slipways.<\/p>\n

Davitt Walsh, the former footballer who swam out to rescue Rioghnach, was later awarded the Michael Heffernan Gold Medal for Marine Gallantry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Louise said she was extremely grateful to him and was also indebted to the other emergency services for their efforts on that day.<\/p>\n

A special 5K memorial walk is taking place at 11:00 local time on Sunday in Buncrana to remember the lives lost.<\/p>\n

Louise said she wanted people to dress in red and white if they could.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully it’ll be beautiful and we’ll be relying on them to sort out the weather,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Every memory I have is happy. Every picture I have they are smiling. <\/p>\n

“They’re carrying on. They loved life. <\/p>\n

“They loved each other and that’s what it’s about. It’s about loving life and living it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An inquest into the deaths was held at the end of 2017 and the jury found the family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-485447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}