Tsunami relatives still waiting for news

Distraught relatives of two Irish people missing since the tsunami struck South-East Asia are still waiting for any trace of their loved ones, it was confirmed today.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said that two missing individuals – Lucy Coyle, 28, from Dublin, and Michael Murphy, 23, from Wexford – are considered high risk cases.

Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern said: “We have to be conscious that there are still a number of Irish people missing.”

Mr Ahern said that there were now “very small numbers” of Irish people who were unaccounted for.

“There are also a small handful that are low risk, the names were given to us, but they were not sure of the exact region they were in. We are still trying to clarify those, they are very small numbers,” a department spokeswoman said.

Still missing is Ms Coyle, an accountant from Killiney, Co Dublin. She was staying in a beach hut in a resort on Phi-Phi Island when the tsunamis hit. She travelled to Thailand from London on December 17 with her Welsh-born boyfriend, Sean Sweetman.

Relatives of Mr Sweetman have travelled to the region in search of the pair, who both live in Bath, in England.

Mr Murphy was on Khao Lak, one of the worst affected areas in the freak wave. The 23-year-old science graduate last spoke to his family on Christmas Day.

A brother of Mr Murphy, from Ballyconnigar, Co Wexford, has travelled to Thailand in the hope of finding out what happened to him.

Gardai are helping families searching for loved ones in the worst affected areas. DNA samples are being taken from close relatives in a bid to determine if missing Irish people are among the dead found in Thailand.

The samples were being sent to Asia to see if they match DNA from bodies recovered there.

The bodies of two Irish people holidaying on Phi Phi Island – Eilis Finnegan and Conor Keightley, from Cookstown, in Tyrone – have already been found.

The Foreign Affairs Department confirmed that Dan Mulhall, Irish Ambassador to Malaysia and Thailand and embassy officials were helping in the search for Ms Coyle and Mr Murphy.

The minister, who is just back from a trip to the Asian disaster zone, including Phuket in Thailand and Banda Aceh in Indonesia, will be working to distribute and put to use the 20 million euro (£14m) pledged by the Government in aid.

“Words or pictures could not describe what we saw. I have never seen anything like it and I don’t think in my life I ever will again.

“It was just incredible, particularly the scene in Banda Aceh, in Indonesia, quite apart from the sheer devastation, just the difficulties that these people will have in the years ahead to try and get their lives back up and running.”

Mr Ahern said he had not heard any aid agencies voice criticism of the Department’s Minister of State, Conor Lenihan, taking a short holiday in Lanzarote in the Canaries after the disaster struck.

He said the junior minister, who is in charge of the Government’s overseas aid budget, was heavily involved in the work to set up a system to locate the Irish people in the region.

“Conor Lenihan has been very involved with this on a daily basis, he broke his holidays to come to a crisis meeting in Brussels,” Mr Ahern told RTÉ radio.

“He has a very young family and they had booked this holiday months in advance, I think it is somewhat unfair, and I haven’t heard any of the aid agencies criticise him for it.”