Missing man’s family seek Dutch police probe

THE family of an Irishman who went missing in the Netherlands three years ago want the Dutch courts to force a full police investigation into his disappearance.

James Patrick Grealis, a carpenter from Co Mayo, vanished without trace after leaving a guesthouse to look for work in October 2008.

The 24-year-old single man, described as “happy and always in contact with home” before his disappearance, was last seen in the town of Breda, in the southern Dutch province of Brabant, where he had recently moved, working as a carpenter on building projects, intending to follow up some “job leads”.

From the outset, the Grealis family from Achill Island, never accepted a Dutch police opinion that the missing man left the country deliberately or broke off contact with them because he wanted “to start a new life somewhere else”.

Their efforts to find out details of mobile phonecalls on the last day he was seen alive and those of his bank account were also frustrated, his sister, Helen, claimed.

“We have all but given up hope of finding JP alive at this stage it’s been so long,” she said yesterday.