"……reliable witnesses like the priest, the police themselves, Sinn Fein officers, and The Irish Times" ………… Keith

A parcel of rogues more like it, I'd say ,Keith. The police themselves have always done everything in their considerable powers to stop the truth coming out whenever it doesn't suit them . Twenty years ago the same Sinn Fein officers (as you call them ) would undoubtedly have reliably witnessed the complete opposite of what they witnessed last month .
"THE longest-serving editor of the Irish Times, Douglas Gageby, was labelled a "white nigger" by the company Chairman Major Thomas McDowell, because of the newspaper's coverage of the North at the outset of the conflict in 1969."
Major McDowell was a retired British army officer and the company chairman of the Irish Times . He contacted the British embassy in 1969 to offer his services to the mother country . The northern reports from the Irish Times were too unreliable the major thought and he asked the British ambassador to help work out how to handle future reporting of the conflict for the Irish paper of record. The ambassador duly obliged .
That Father Donegan is pretty cool with the metaphors though, you've got to give him that . He should be writing fiction -or perhaps he's looking for a job with the Irish Times .

" Euro Disney theme park for rioting. It was ludicrous."……. Fr Donegan

"Young teenage girls dressed up to watch their boyfriends hurl petrol bombs and stones: "Like models on a Milan catwalk," said Fr Donegan.