A body was found in the ocean near Co Clare on the sixth day of an ongoing search for a missing boy. The search had been taking place at the Cliffs of Moher since last Tuesday. Boat passengers alerted authorities after spotting something in the water roughly 2km north of Doolin, where the search led by the Gardaí was being conducted, around 10 am today. The boat’s captain sounded the alarm immediately.
The marine rescue coordination centre of the Irish Coast Guard in Kerry was notified, resulting in the Doolin unit along with RNLI and Gardaí being alerted. The Doolin Coast Guard launched their rigid inflatable boat (RIB), the Doolin Delta, while an all-weather lifeboat from RNLI based on Inis Mór set off as well.
Upon reaching the given location, the Doolin Coast Guard team found a body. The RNLI volunteers assisted in bringing the body on board the Doolin Delta boat and it was returned to Doolin Pier. The body was transported to a nearby Coast Guard station, following which both the RNLI lifeboat and the Coast Guard boat proceeded to Doolin.
The discovered body was taken with a hearse to be officially identified at University Hospital Limerick, where a postmortem examination will be carried out.
The large-scale operation involved personnel from eight different counties who had been looking for the 12-year-old boy who was reported missing after getting separated from his mother on a trip to the Cliffs of Moher. A land, air, and sea rescue operation had started around 2pm last Tuesday and continued into the evening until sea conditions began to worsen.
The initial exploration involved the Doolin division of the Irish Coast Guard, the Aran Islands RNLI all-weather lifeboat, several law enforcement officers and Rescue 115. On the subsequent Wednesday morning, Clare’s Civil Defence mobilised their unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) team to deploy a drone.
The Garda Water Unit’s divers, along with those from Doolin Coast Guard, conducted searches along the base of the cliffs, but were hindered by poor visibility due to low lying clouds and mist. The Galway-based Coast Guard unit from Cleggan travelled to Clare to offer support to the Doolin team, employing advanced drones to scour the cliff base and surrounding shoreline.
As the week proceeded, Civil Defence units from North Cork, West Cork and Kerry dispatched drone operators to aid in the search operation. Moreover, teams from Laois and Wicklow further supplemented the search, with another Dublin-based team scheduled to journey to Clare by Sunday. Galway and Mayo Civil Defence teams also partook in the investigation, searching the Galway Bay coastline.
The Costello Bay division of the Irish Coast Guard scanned sections of the Galway shoreline, whereas the land-based Inis Oírr (Aran Islands) unit executed shoreline searches within their territory, supervised by the Doolin Coast Guard.
The marine rescue coordination centre in Kerry hosted the Irish Coast Guard’s lead officers who engaged drift modelling software to predict potential drift patterns of a body. Additionally, the Shannon-based Irish Coast Guard helicopter, Rescue 115, conducted investigations along the Clare shoreline and in Galway Bay.