The body of a young boy who vanished near the Cliffs of Moher, Co Clare, has been retrieved from the sea. The confirmation from Garda representatives brings the search operation to an end, with a case being assembled for the coroner. At around 10 in the morning, passengers on a recreational vessel noticed something in the water off the Clare coast, about 2km north of Doolin, from where the search was being managed by Garda, promptly triggering the alarm.
The Doolin unit of the Irish Coast Guard, together with the RNLI and Garda, were alerted by supervisors at the Coast Guard’s marine rescue centre in Kerry. Doolin Coast Guard employed their rigid inflatable boat (rib), and the RNLI dispatched its all-weather lifeboat from Kilronan, Inis Mór.
Once they reached the provided coordinates, Doolin Coast Guard personnel discovered the boy’s body. Assisted by the RNLI team, the body was taken aboard the Doolin boat and brought back to Doolin Pier, before being transferred to the nearby Coast Guard station. The RNLI lifeboat also journeyed back to Doolin alongside the Coast Guard vessel.
The boy’s body was sent by funeral car to the University Hospital Limerick for an autopsy. The operation to find the 12-year-old, who got separated from his mother during a visit to the Cliffs of Moher the previous Tuesday, was a multi-agency effort involving personnel from eight different counties.
A comprehensive search and rescue mission was initiated on Tuesday around 2pm, covering land, air, and sea, and continued until the evening when sea conditions began worsening. The primary search comprised of units from the Irish Coast Guard in Doolin, the all-weather lifeboat from Aran Islands RNLI, Rescue 115, and some police personnel. Wednesday morning witnessed the deployment of a drone by the Clare Civil Defence’s unmanned aerial vehicle team.
Both Garda divers and Doolin Coast Guard participated in the explorations along the cliff base, although every effort was hindered by dense fog and low cloud cover. To supplement the local Coast Guard unit, their colleagues at Cleggan in Galway came over, bringing high-end drones to expand searches along the coastline and cliff base.
Throughout the week, Civil Defence units from North Cork, West Cork and Kerry sent drone teams to aid the operation. Additionally, teams from Laois and Wicklow joined the search while a Dublin-based unit planned to head towards Clare come Sunday. In addition, Galway and Mayo Civil Defence carried out explorations along the Galway Bay coastline as part of the mission.
The Costello Bay division of the Irish Coast Guard also investigated significant regions along the Galway coastline while members of Inis Oírr’s (Aran Islands) team performed shoreline explorations in their region. The terrestrial team from this unit is managed by Doolin Coast Guard.
To work out where a body might drift to, watch officers at Kerry’s marine rescue coordination centre, operated by the Irish Coast Guard, used drift modelling technology. Rescue 115, the Irish Coast Guard’s helicopter based in Shannon, was constantly involved in searches along the Clare coastline and across Galway Bay.