Galway’s face of Console left shocked, sickened, defiled, betrayed

The Galway woman who was the face of Console in the west for more than a decade has broken her silence – to say she feels ‘defiled’ and ‘utterly betrayed’ by the man she now knows defrauded the charity of a fortune.

Margaret Tierney, the organisation’s Galway-based Director of Business Development and arguably the charity’s highest ranking executive after Paul Kelly, said that the revelations shocked her to the core.

“I now feel I was groomed like a paedophile would do to a child. I am sickened but whatever about me, I feel so bad for all the bereaved families who have been let down,” she said, fighting back the tears.

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The Galway woman said she had no inkling that the man who was her boss was squandering tens of thousands of the charity’s money on top-of-the-range cars, trips abroad, fine dining and clothes.

Ms Tierney broke her silence to speak exclusively to the Connacht Tribune saying her heart was broken that her dream of seeing a ‘comfort home’ for bereaved families and a 24 hour helpline would now be compromised by Kelly’s actions.

“He was not only my boss but someone I considered a family friend, someone who I had said would do my own eulogy. . . I feel defiled now.

“I am still in shock that he could have done this because I – and many others – believed in him so much. I believed he was doing good; a legacy in the memory of his sister, Sharon, who died by suicide. And I have to cling on to the idea that he genuinely started out with good intentions,” she said.

See the full story and more of the interview in this week’s Connacht Tribune