Intermediaries working between the IRA and the Government are expected to identify six graves containing eight bodies, following yesterday's discovery of a coffin containing the remains of Eamonn Molloy, who was killed in Belfast in the mid-1970s.
All the dead are believed to be buried just south of the Border in Co Louth. The Government expects that the bodies of the eight people killed by the IRA - including Jean McConville, the mother of 10 who was dragged from her children at Christmas 1971 - would be exhumed over the weekend.
By late afternoon yesterday, the IRA had given detailed information on at least two further grave sites. The information was being passed to two Redemptorist priests, one of whom is Father Alex Reid from Clonard Monastery in Belfast. The two clerics spent most of Thursday evening and yesterday in liaison with the IRA and the authorities in the Republic.
Supt John Farrelly of the Garda Press Office confirmed that the coffin was recovered as a result of information given directly by the priests to Dundalk gardai.
The priests had been directed to Faughart graveyard at daylight yesterday, and there found a coffin lying above ground.
The coffin containing the remains of what is believed to be Mr Molloy were removed to the Coroner's office in Dublin, in compliance with the Coroners Act of 1962, arriving at the morgue at 2.45 p.m. yesterday, when they were examined by the State pathologists, Dr John Harbison and Dr Marie Cassidy.
It is understood the priests were later given details of two further graves. This information was relayed to the newly-formed Independent Commission for the Recovery of Victims' Remains.
This commission was set up by joint legislation in the UK and the Republic which specifies that information gained in the recovery of the bodies cannot be used in a criminal prosecution.
Government officials were last evening hopeful that graves containing the remains of Mrs McConville and seven others would now be uncovered. The seven are Kevin McKee and Seamus Wright, who disappeared from Belfast in 1972 and who may be buried in a single grave; John McClory and Brian McKinney, who similarly disappeared together in 1978 and may be buried together; John McIlroy and Seamus Wright who disappeared in 1994 from Belfast; and Ms Columba McVeigh (17), who was abducted in Co Tyrone in 1975. The IRA has given no information yet about the remains of four other people who were abducted, murdered and buried secretly in the same area. The Southern head of the Independent Commission, Mr John Wilson, the former Government minister, is understood to have already made approaches on behalf of these victims: Charles Armstrong (55) and Gerald Evens (24) both from Crossmaglen; Sean Murphy, from Cregganduff in south Armagh; and Capt Robert Nairac, the British army officer kidnapped and killed in 1977.
Mr Wilson is also known to have made representations on behalf of the family of a Newry man, Seamus Ruddy, who was a leading member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party the political wing of the splinter paramilitary organisation, the Irish National Liberation Army. Mr Ruddy was killed in Paris by his associates in 1976. Earlier this year an IRSP member supplied information to the Government about a secret grave where he alleged Mr Ruddy was buried, but the information proved to be untrue. It is feared the INLA/IRSP may not actually know where Mr Ruddy's remains lie.