THE commission tasked with locating the remains of IRA victims has provided expert advice to gardaí conducting a search of marshland for missing Co Louth teenager Ciara Breen.
Garda teams yesterday braved torrential rain to begin the second day of their search of marshland on the outskirts of Dundalk as part of efforts to solve the 18-year-old mystery about what happened to the teenager.
The search operation is focussed on an area of wetland off the Ardee Road known as Balmer’s Bog. Local gardaí are being assisted by the force’s sub aqua and forensic teams and the search is expected to take several weeks.
It emerged yesterday that the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR), which has conducted numerous digs during searches for the so-called Disappeared, had provided guidance to gardaí when they were planning the Balmer’s Bog operation.
An ICLVR spokesman told The Irish News that gardaí had approached the commission “some months ago” seeking advice on how it “would go about searching the type of terrain they were interested in”.
“That was explained in terms of mapping the area, using geophysics to identify anomalies under the surface and so on,” the spokesman said, stressing that the ICLVR was not involved in the actual search process.
“Any specialist contractors and forensic archaeologists helping with the investigation are entirely independent,” he said.
Ciara, who was just 17 when she disappeared, left the family home at Bachelor’s Walk in Dundalk while her mother Bernadette was sleeping during the night of February 12 1997.
Meanwhile, a retired cold case Garda detective has said he believes that teenager had left her home in the middle of the night to meet an older man.
Alan Bailey is a former detective sergeant who was involved in Operation Trace – the Garda probe into the unsolved disappearances of six women in Leinster during the 1990s, including Ciara.
Mr Bailey, who published a book last year entitled ‘Missing, Presumed’, told Newstalk Breakfast that gardaí believe Ciara quietly left her house to meet the older man.
He said investigators were aware that a man who was “almost double” Ciara’s age had been “hanging around” on the fringes of “all the youngsters’ groups” when she vanished without a trace.
A man in his 50s was arrested in Drogheda last April and questioned about the circumstances surrounding the disappearance.
He was later released without charge, with gardaí saying they would prepare a file for the Republic’s Director of Prosecutions.
