Irish priest, official thank Bay Area for support

The first of the funerals for the victims will take place tomorrow and the families have thanked the Irish public for their support, they have also appealed for privacy.

Relatives of Eoghan Culligan, Lorcan Miller, Niccolai Schuster and Eimar Walsh returned to on the same flight, local media reported.

Four of the families issued a statement thanking everyone, in Ireland and the USA, for their sympathy and support.

The American Ireland Fund, which said the incident had a profound effect on the Irish at home and overseas, donated $100,000 (€88,000) last week to “support those who are providing care and assistance on the ground, in particular the San Francisco Irish Pastoral Center”.

Before leaving San Francisco the families said: “Our children were extraordinarily blessed in their friends and we are enormously proud of them”.

The six students, all aged 21 and 22, died early Tuesday when a fourth-floor apartment balcony collapsed during a birthday party at the complex in Berkeley, two blocks from the University of California campus.

While Ashely, who lived in the area with her parents Jackie and George, and sister Amanda, was laid to rest there, Olivia’s body will be either buried or cremated in Ireland.

“We will fight to make changes so that no family will ever have to go through what we have been through for the past five days which has changed our lives forever”.

The US-Ireland Alliance, which runs the Mitchell Scholarship program that annually sends USA students to Ireland, said in a statement: “Everyone associated with the Mitchell Scholarship program is saddened by the deaths of six Irish students in Berkeley“.

The other four dead victims were mourned at a Friday night vigil in Oakland attended by family members and dozens of their fellow Irish students, including some who saw them in their final moments.

A spokesman with John Muir hospital in Walnut Creek says two of the injured, Jack Halpin and Conor Flynn, are in fair condition Monday.

Diaspora Jimmy Deenihan had flown to San Francisco last week to represent the Irish government.

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams extended his condolences to the family and friends of those killed and injured.

The body of the final Irish victim of the Berkeley balcony tragedy has been brought back to Ireland.