Patrick Kielty, his father's murder, and how victims speak about early release

Patrick Kielty is best known as a comedian and broadcaster, and since 2023 as the host of The Late Late Show on RTÉ. He has also become one of the most quoted voices on what the peace process asked of victims' families.

His father's murder

In January 1988 his father, Jack Kielty, a building contractor and well-known GAA figure in County Down, was shot dead by loyalist gunmen at his office in Dundrum. Patrick was 16 and at school. Three men were later convicted and given life sentences. Like hundreds of other prisoners, they were released early under the scheme created by the Good Friday Agreement.

What he has said

Kielty explored his father's death and his own feelings about the Agreement in a 2018 BBC One documentary. In January 2021, interviewed on RTÉ by the former President Mary McAleese, he described the killing as an assassination, and said that the early release of his father's killers was "a price worth paying" if it helped Northern Ireland move on from violence. He added that he hoped no other family would have to go through what his had.

Those comments have been widely cited, partly because they cut against the assumption that victims oppose early release, and partly because of the tone in which they were made. Other relatives of people killed in the Troubles have said that hearing him speak helped them talk about their own losses, including relatives of people killed by the loyalist Michael Stone.

Not all victims agree

There is no single victims' view. Many families felt the early-release scheme was a betrayal and continue to campaign for prosecutions, inquests or inquiries. Michael Stone, convicted of six murders including three in his 1988 attack on a funeral at Milltown Cemetery, was released under the Agreement in 2000, returned to prison after an armed attack on Parliament Buildings at Stormont in 2006, and was released again on licence in 2021, after legal challenges by relatives of his victims. Each step was opposed by some of those families.

We are not naming relatives of victims who have spoken to the media as private individuals. The point is the range of responses: some, like Kielty, accept early release as part of the price of peace; others feel the price was paid only by them.