Searches over for Disappeared

Jean McConville with three of her 10 children

The official search by Irish police for the bodies of IRA murder victims, the so-called Disappeared, has ended.

Gardai have carried out extensive digs at five sites in the Republic of Ireland for the last three weeks, looking for the remains of six people the IRA killed and secretly buried during the 1970s.

Searches for nine victims' remains began last summer, after the IRA passed information to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains.

Digging resumed three weeks ago

But these were called off after a few months, because the information was not precise enough.

The latest attempt to locate the remains began on 2 May but the commission said the searches would only last for three weeks.

Those searches, which have proved fruitless, have now ended.

But the family of one IRA murder victim have said they will continue digging for their mother.

Belfast mother of ten, Jean McConville, is believed to have been buried at Templetown beach in County Louth.

Three generations of family

She was abducted from her west Belfast home in 1972, after she went to the aid of a fatally wounded British soldier outside her front door.

Her family have said that if necessary, three generations of the McConvilles - her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren - would stay on the beach until they found something.

Her eldest son, Robert, said that the family had obtained permission from land-owners, whose property bordered the beach, to extend the search onto their land.

He said they had already received offers of help to continue the search themselves and planed to bring their own mechanical diggers to the beach on Monday. They are now awaiting council permission.

"If we can maintain the search for our mother we have the possibility of maintaining the rest of the digs open. Even if it's only part time maybe three days a week," he said.

"It's giving us something to cling to after so many years of despair."

Irish police have also ended the searches for the remains of Columba McVeigh at Bragan in County Monaghan; Danny McIlhone at Ballynultagh in County Wicklow; Kevin McKee and Seamus Wright in Coghallstown near Navan in County Meath and Brendan Megraw at Oristown near Kells in County Meath.

Last year, Gardai recovered the bodies of Eamon Molloy, left in a coffin in a graveyard in County Louth, and John McClory and Brian McKinney, whose remains were found after weeks of digging in County Monaghan.