The families of the Disappeared have been pleading for decades for information so they can give their loved ones a proper burial and find closure.
Every once in a while, hopes are rekindled that a new piece of information might end their nightmare.
New searches may resume in some of Ireland’s most inhospitable places and the families wait for news. And while those families carry that burden of not knowing with them every day, it’s only once in a while that the public conscience is pricked to their plight.
Of 17 ‘Disappeared’, the remains of four are still to be found.
The remains of perhaps the most prominent among them — and the only woman to have ‘disappeared’ — Jean McConville were finally found in 2003, on Shelling Hill Beach in Co Louth in the Republic of Ireland. That was four years after the IRA admitted it murdered nine of the Disappeared.
Her story has recently featured in the new Disney+ series Say Nothing. For others, there has been no such closure and not so much publicity.
Lurgan man Seamus Maguire, Co Tyrone teenager Columba McVeigh and Captain Robert Nairac, a British Army officer, are three cases still listed as unresolved.
Joe Lynskey
The fourth is Joe Lynskey, a former Cistercian monk from Belfast who later joined the IRA. Abducted, murdered and secretly buried by the IRA in 1972, the question of where his body has lain all these years has never been answered.
In the background, The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR) has been working to help families still waiting and hoping for information to help them recover the bodies.
In the case of Joe Lynskey, a grave has now been exhumed in Annyalla cemetery in Monaghan after information on ‘suspicious activity’ that coincides with the time of his disappearance was received.
There will, inevitably, be a lengthy wait as it will take a considerable amount of time to establish the identity of any remains found in the grave.
There have been so many false alarms in the past that nothing can be certain yet, but it can only be hoped that one more story of the Disappeared is entering its final chapter.
As for the other families still tormented after all these years, they remain hopeful that someday, someone will have the decency to provide information that will give them a semblance of closure and allow them to give their loved ones a proper burial.
The families of the Disappeared deserve so much better than those with the knowledge to end their pain taking secrets to their own graves.