'Women do not feel safe going for walk or jog'

"Women do not feel safe day or night when simply going for a walk, stroll or jog," a midlands TD has said.

Speaking the day after popular 23 year old teacher Ashling Murphy was fatally injured in an attack on the Grand Canal towpath in Tullamore, Offaly TD Barry Cowen said that "our locality and indeed our country is stunned and numbed by the senseless and horrific act".

"We pray and offer support to her family, her wide circle of friends, her colleagues and her students at Durrow National School. They are all the immediate priority."

Deputy Cowen also said that more needs to be done to ensure that women feel safe when going for a jog or walk on their own.

"There has to be a realisation that society can no longer allow or be aware without taking action that women do not feel safe day or night when simply going for a walk, stroll or jog. I don’t have or know the answers that right this wrong but I hope that our collective wisdom might initiate whatever it takes to rectify this terrible reality. We have a beautiful country with many amenities. Men and women alike should share all it has to offer as equals," he said.

A primary school teacher at Durrow NS, Ms Murphy comes from a well-known local musical family from the Blueball area.

She was a former student of Mary Immaculate College where she gradated from recently and was a talented musician and member of Ballyboy CCE

Earlier today she was described as “an angel of a teacher” by her colleagues in Durrow NS.

Recently retired principal Frank Kelly said Aisling was a first-class teacher with many talents from music to sport, and it was a joy to go into her classroom where her first class students were always smiling.

“She was just an angel of a teacher, a beautiful girl. Our staff came in at 8am this morning and there was a flood of tears,” he told Midlands 103.