[5] Her baby son died at the same time and the story of her death played a huge part in a seminal national debate on women giving birth outside marriage.

[1][4][14] Diarmuid had moved to Cóbh for work, and the family lived in Graham's Terrace in the town, a row of Victorian houses directly overlooking the harbour.

[1][4] They moved again in 1981, this time to nearby Granard, a small town in County Longford where Diarmuid had purchased The Copper Pot, a pub on the Main Street.

[1][4][14] On the afternoon of Tuesday 31 January 1984, in Granard, County Longford, fifteen-year-old Lovett left her Catholic Cnoc Mhuire Secondary School and made her way to a grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mary at the top of the town, where she gave birth to her son.

They alerted a passing farmer, who rushed to the nearby Parochial House to inform the parish priest of the discovery of Lovett and her already deceased baby in the adjacent grotto.

A quarter of a century on from a tragedy that shocked the nation, many questions remain unanswered about the deaths of Ann Lovett and her infant child.On Saturday 4 February, Ireland's most popular television show, The Late Late Show, was coming to an end, when host Gay Byrne read a headline from the next day's Sunday Tribune newspaper: "Girl, 15, Dies Giving Birth in a Field".

[1] A phone call had been made to the newspaper by an anonymous caller from Granard, and the story, broken in the Sunday Tribune by Emily O'Reilly, drew the attention of the world to Lovett.

"[17] The local community and clergy, including the order of nuns at the school which Lovett had attended, released a statement denying any knowledge of her pregnancy.

In National Archives of Ireland documents released in December 2014, a letter was revealed, written by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Armagh to poet Christopher Daybell, which claimed Lovett's "sad death reflects more on her immaturity than on any lack of Christian charity".

[20] An inquest was held in Mullingar a few weeks later and found that Lovett's death was due to irreversible shock caused by haemorrhage and exposure during childbirth.

[2] According to McDonnell, their close and loving relationship had foundered when Lovett had found it difficult to continue, after she had come to him one night in late April 1983, apparently having suffered a serious assault and beating.

According to McDonnell, Father Quinn then brought him to the palace of Colm O'Reilly, then Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, who wanted to know what he had told the Garda Síochána.

Twelve years after Ann's death, Lorelei Harris, a producer on the Gay Byrne programme, decided to make a radio documentary on the letters sent to the show in the immediate aftermath of the Granard tragedy.