A Romanian teenager who was missing for five months and features on the Garda's new missing children website turned up in Dublin safe and well yesterday just hours before the new website was launched at Garda Headquarters in the Phoenix Park.
Madalina Rosu (16) was spotted by a garda after she disembarked from a ferry which arrived at Dublin Port from the UK yesterday morning. The garda, who was on duty at the time, recognised the girl from her photograph, which was circulated by gardaí when she went missing last April. Madalina was one of eight missing persons aged under 18 at the time of their disappearance to be featured on the new www.missingkids.ie website.
She was taken into care and gardaí will interview her in an effort to piece together her movements since she was reported missing. It is understood she was unaccompanied when she originally arrived in Ireland.
Another girl, 16-year-old Sergail Paalelunnngl, who went missing from Fairview, Dublin, in November 2002, was found safe and well in her native Moldova in recent weeks.
The new website includes pictures of the children at the time of their disappearance, stretching back as far as 1977, and a computer-generated artist's impression of how they might look today. The website is linked to 15 other international missing persons sites.
It was launched by the Garda Commissioner, Mr Noel Conroy, and the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell.
Some of the parents of the missing children were at yesterday's launched. Ms Alice Cairns, mother of missing Dublin schoolboy Philip Cairns, said the new website was a welcome development.
"Philip is 18 years missing now, so unfortunately it wasn't available in those days. But for any families of children who go missing now it will be of great benefit to have somewhere to log on to and maybe give people hope, especially because it can be seen around the world so fast."
Philip was 13 when he went missing from his home on Ballyroan Road, Rathfarnham, on October 23rd, 1986, when he left to return to school after lunch. He would now be aged 31.
"In the beginning you think it's been 20 minutes, or an hour, then as the day goes on you get more worried but you don't give up hope he'll come back. But Philip didn't return, and you have to keep going."
Mary Boyle, from Kincasslagh, Co Donegal, vanished 27 years ago when she was aged just six. The Boyle family were on a St Patrick's Day visit from their home to relatives 50 miles south, in Cashelard, Co Donegal.
Mary was last seen following her uncle, Mr Gerry Gallagher, across some boggy land as he carried a borrowed ladder back to a neighbour.
Mary turned round to head back on her own to her grandparents' home. She never arrived back at the house.
Her mother Ann said yesterday her family still constantly wondered what had happened to Mary.
"It would be nice to know what happened to her, it would be nice before we died to know that. I keep hoping that there will come a day when we know what happened to Mary."
The other five outstanding cases featured on the site are:
