HAVING SPENT thousands in recent years to try and prevent acts of vandalism at St Mary’s Church in recent months, parishioners at St Mary’s Church have been left utterly distraught following the latest in a long line of attacks from vandals on the historic building.

Having served for the past ten years as Church Warden, Ken Leech is set to retire this year, feeling utterly demoralised following years of acts of vandalism on the church. The latest attack has seen a collection of faces sprayed on the back of the church along with a shocking discriminatory message (albeit horribly misspelled) on a back door.

Mr Leech says that, although incredibly frustrating, this is not the worst act of vandalism that the church has seen in recent years. “We’ve had to replace several panes of glass,” he explained. “One week there was over €400 worth of damage done. Then when we were waiting to fix the problem another eight panes, including some beautiful stained glass windows, were broken.”

In a bid to stop bricks and stones being put through the church windows, over €3,000 in church funds has been spent on mesh covering for the back windows. Having spent this much money, it was hoped that the problem had been solved, but last week Mr Leech arrived to the church to find graffiti scrawled all over.

“It looks like it could be youngsters,” he said. “We have contacted gardaí and they have said that they are investigating the matter and are appealing for witnesses.”

Mr Leech said that previously, drugs paraphernalia had also been found at the back of the church, a spot that has had problems with anti-social behaviour for years.

“We’ve tried everything,” he said. “We thought about staying watch, but you can’t stay at the church watching ’til all hours in the hopes that they might strike. It’s a crazy situation. We’ve spent so much money on this and then we had to replace a stairs in the church recently at a cost of €20,000 too. We’re only a relatively small congregation here and it’s a lot of money.”

As he is retiring from the role of Church Warden this year, Ken is hoping to get to the bottom of the vandalism problem at the church once and for all and has appealed for any member of the public with information on those responsible to contact Enniscorthy Garda Station on 053 9242580.

Discriminatory and misspelled graffiti at the back of St Mary’s Church where there’s been an ongoing problem with vandalism for years.