Searchers last night admitted that hope of finding alive five fishermen missing following the sinking of the Pere Charles off the southeast coast have faded after stormy weather yesterday curtailed the search for their vessel.
Skipper Tom Hennessy and crewmen Pat Hennessy, Billy O'Connor, Pat Coady and Andriy Dyrin are all believed to have gone down with their trawler when it suddenly sank two miles off Hook Head in Co Wexford on Wednesday evening.
Yesterday evening, as a search operation was being wound down for the night, local Dunmore East RNLI officer, Nicho Murphy admitted that the chances of the five men surviving were virtually non-existent.
"It's practically 24 hours on since the boat went down and with the cold at this time of year it's just not feasible to stay in the water for that length of time," said Mr Murphy, confirming that the boat's two life rafts had been found empty.
Relatives of the missing men spent the day anxiously waiting for news at the RNLI station at Dunmore East but as the hours passed, at least one family seemed to become reconciled to the loss of their loved one.
Patrick Coady's sister, Kelly, said it was a terrible tragedy for her family as Patrick's father, Stephen, had drowned in a boating accident in Cornwall last year and his grandfather, Paddy Coady, drowned while lobster fishing off Wexford in 1995.
"I'm just hoping that they find their bodies - it's not only our families, it's everybody else's as well. It's very hard - Paddy Coady died in 1995, his father, Stephen died last year - at least we have his father and his grandfather.
"Now we're just hoping for the best now that we can get Patrick - there's nothing we can do - they [the searchers] are doing very good work out there - they can't do any more for us - I just hope they keep the search going," she said.
Owner of the Pere Charles, Michael Walsh said that "as the hours go on, the chances [of the men being alive] are slimmer and slimmer and now we're just hoping, if they are drowned, that we can bring back the bodies."
Chief Supt Michael Murphy of Wexford, who is helping co-ordinate the joint Irish Coast Guard, Navy and Garda operation, said the search would continue indefinitely but it had been severely hampered by bad weather. Teams of Garda and Navy divers had been on standby yesterday but were prevented by treacherous stormy seas and strong winds from diving where the Pere Charles is believed to have gone down two miles off Hook Head.
According to Lt Cmdr Terry Ward of the Naval Service, the area where it was last seen is between 27 and 32 metres deep and within normal diving range but the stormy seas meant divers were unable to go down.
Yesterday's search involved the Dunmore East, Kilmore Quay and Rosslare RNLI lifeboats as well as two Irish Coastguard helicopters and over a dozen trawlers from Dunmore East, Waterford and Kilmore Quay.
Meanwhile, Minister for Transport Martin Cullen visited the relatives of the missing men and assured them that the full resources of his department would be made available to investigate the tragedy.