Ireland's database of unidentified remains 'incomplete'

Coroners across the country have now been asked to provide any visuals that could help identify the remains and bring closure to families of long-term missing people. File picture

A database of Ireland’s unidentified remains is incomplete and not “exhaustive”, the Department of Justice has admitted.

The department is now planning to upgrade the database to include images of any distinguishing features such as jewellery, clothing, and tattoos found with unidentified remains. 

Coroners across the country have now been asked to provide any visuals that could help identify the remains and bring closure to families of long-term missing people.

It comes as information filed by coroners on the statistics for each coronial district is being compiled by the Department of Justice, with an expansion to the database published last May expected to be made this coming May.

The details of the 44 human remains — including location and date of discovery, and any distinctive aspects such as clothing or tattoos — were published on the database last year.

However, the spreadsheet does not include any images.

Among the remains listed on the spreadsheet is the body of a woman believed to be Asian, possibly Vietnamese. Her remains were taken from the sea off Doolin, Co Clare, in October 2018. The database reveals that she had “open wounds and open fractures not deemed post mortem”.

However, the Irish Examiner discovered that more in-depth details about the woman’s remains are on the UK database of unidentified remains, including photos of jewellery which the woman had been wearing — a bracelet and a ring with green stones.

Meanwhile, the data relating to the discovery of remains, believed to be those of an elderly woman, along an old railway line in Midleton in January 2021 does not include an image of an item of clothing found with the remains — even though images have been used a number of times in garda appeals for information. The photos were most recently used last month to mark the third anniversary of the discovery.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said: “The Department is currently compiling Coroners’ 2023 unidentified remains returns and will update the unidentified remains dataset with all additional data submitted by the Coroners by May of this year.  Coroners have been asked to provide visuals (of distinctive items such as jewellery, clothing, tattoos, etc) found with or on the unidentified remains where they are available. It is intended that visual detail submitted will be published as part of the Unidentified Remains dataset.” 

The dataset is not exhaustive. Many Coroner files are in hard copy have been archived, particularly on the retirement of previous Coroners and the dataset therefore does not include any details which may be contained in those archived files. Many coroners also hold records that predate digitisation and therefore the compilation of returns is not a straightforward process for many.

The department confirmed the planned improvements to the information following a recent meeting between families of long term missing people with Minister for Justice Helen McEntee; Junior Justice Minister James Browne, and Junior Agriculture Minister Martin Hayden. Department of Justice officials also attended the meeting.

Among those who represented families of missing people were Claire Clarke Keane, Michael and Bernie Jacob, and Laura and Julie Crawford.

The Crawfords’s brother John’s body was discovered on a beach in Cumbria in the north-west of England in 2000, some months after he disappeared from his home in Tallaght.

His body was finally identified in 2011 after DNA taken from the belongings of Mr Crawford was circulated by gardaí to other police forces. He had been buried in a cemetery in the UK.

Claire Clarke Keane’s sister Priscilla went missing while horseriding with her employer, Lynda Kavanagh, in Wicklow in 1988. Ms Kavanagh’s body was recovered from the River Dargle two days later but Ms Clarke has never been found.

The Jacobs’s 18-year-old daughter Deirdre disappeared in July 1998, in Newbridge, Co Kildare. Her case was upgraded to a murder probe in August 2018.