The Irish diplomatic mission in Phuket is working around the clock helping victims and their relatives, writes Clifford Coonan
It's a grim, heartbreaking task, trying to find the bodies of Irish people lost in the tsunamis which lashed southern Thailand on St Stephen's Day. And it's one which has put the diplomats, volunteers and, of course, the victims' relatives who have come here to find their loved ones, under major physical and emotional strain.
Few people are trained for this kind of work - how could anyone expect to learn how to deal with such a monstrous tragedy? The job of a diplomat is varied, but no-one has written a rule book for this work.
"It's been a bruising few days. I never expected to have this kind of task as a diplomat," Dan Mulhall, Ireland's ambassador to Malaysia and Thailand, and the man who has been leading the Irish response on the ground, said. He arrived down from Kuala Lumpur on the day after the waves and has been on the move ever since.
The team is located in the Pearl Hotel in Phuket, which is the focal point for Irish efforts to trace missing nationals. It's not a pretty place, a monument to the first tourist boom to hit Thailand in the 1970s - dated, dull and in need of renovation. The neighbouring Thai massage parlour adds a further layer of incongruity to the picture.
The Pearl Hotel was chosen because of its location near the City Hall, where relief workers, Thai soldiers, diplomats and volunteers have been trying to put some kind of order on the chaos following the disaster. And it's near the main hospitals.
Norway, which lost the second-highest number of tourists, after Sweden, is also located here, as is the Danish mission. On the second floor, the Irish have set up an emergency contact desk which is manned by overworked Irish consular officials.
Dan Mulhall has spent much of the last period in Krabi on the southern mainland, where the bodies of those who lost their lives on the former tourist idyll of Phi-Phi are brought. One of the bodies from there has already been identified, that of Eilis Finnegan.
Mulhall, an energetic and self-deprecating man, has risen to the awful task and shown real courage. A few weeks ago his daughter was holidaying on Phi-Phi Island, where three of the Irish high risk missing are believed to have been holidaying.
He spent a lot of time with Barry Murphy, Eilis's boyfriend. The couple were waiting on Phi-Phi Island for a ferry but ran when the waves came. Murphy stopped to help a boy as Eilis ran ahead, and when the waves finally receded his girlfriend was gone. He has returned to Ireland with her remains.
Still missing is Lucy Coyle, from Killiney, Co Dublin, who was staying in a beach hut in a resort on Phi-Phi Island when the tsunamis hit. The 29-year-old accountant came to Thailand with her Welsh-born boyfriend, Sean Sweetman, during the week before Christmas. They live in Bath in England.
Also missing is Conor Keightley, whose 31st birthday fell on New Year's Eve, and comes from Cookstown, Co Tyrone. His family says he returned safely from a boat trip near Phi-Phi on Christmas Day.
Michael Murphy from Co Wexford was on Khao Lak, which was the worst affected area in the wave. The 23-year-old science graduate last spoke to his family on Christmas Day.
Another Irish person, Joan Whyte, who had moved to Scotland, has been added to the high-risk list of missing people. She was on Phuket on Christmas Day.
The ambassador has praised the Thai authorities for being helpful. But, as others point out, this co-operation doesn't mean the bureaucracy is any more palatable.
Many of the bodies from the disaster are unrecognisable by sight. The authorities are using DVI, a protocol for identifying victims of disasters worked out by Interpol, to put names to bodies. Family members have to fill out a form with a detailed description. They are then matched up with people meeting the description in terms of gender, age, height, build and ethnic background. They are cross-checked against the numbered bodies in the temporary morgues set up in Buddhist temples around the island and on the mainland.
It's a reliable, but often slow, procedure. And a harrowing one. In some ways, using the process offers a form of closure, but in other ways it can drag out the pain. Nor is there a guarantee that bodies will ever be recovered.
As one German forensic expert told me, DVI can take months - and time is one thing the victims' families do not have. They want some kind of closure. There have been incidents of relatives fighting over bodies. There are lots of conflicting lists, and problems such as Australians having Irish names.
Mulhall's team of around 12 people has been going non-stop. Kampol Thongchai, administration officer at the consulate in Bangkok, is on the phone all the time. There are flights to arrange, details of the visit of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, to work out, accommodation for the travelling team of forensic experts to sort out. Thongchai keeps the whole machine running.
The Irish honorary consul in Bangkok, Gary Biesty, has applied his local knowledge to help the search. Kyle O'Sullivan, a Brussels-based Irish diplomat, has put his eight years of experience in Hong Kong and Beijing to good use. The team is feeling the strain, and Mulhall has flown back to Kuala Lumpur for some much-needed sleep, though he will be back in time for the minister's visit tomorrow.
Terry McParland of Enterprise Ireland at the Irish embassy in Kuala Lumpur comes down to give Mulhall some leeway. He says the disaster highlights the importance of people registering with their embassies when they move abroad. The Irish community in Phuket probably doesn't number more than two dozen, divided between the people living in the beach area of Patong and the more settled community who have retired to be near the island's golf courses.
There is terrific goodwill about. Helene Fallon-Wood, from Greystones, and her husband Peter Wood, from Dundrum, have a property business in Phuket and Helene works with children who have HIV-AIDS.
They came back from their Irish holiday to find Phuket devastated, but barely unpacked before arriving into the crisis centre, helping with translation and driving people here and there. The phone in the crisis centre is constantly ringing with offers of help.
Howard Digby-Johns runs the Tudor-style, Green Man pub, towards which many Irish people gravitate. He has raised 1.5 million baht (€29,356) for victims of the disaster and compares the wave to the Old Testament Deluge. "In the original description of the flood, Noah said how the water stood up out of the ocean. That's what it was like," he says.
In the wake of the disaster, scores of people gathered on the lawn outside the pub, disoriented, lost. "We gave them all money, a thousand baht (€19.54), or whatever. Every single baht was returned, though some people went up the mountains for a few days afterwards and repaid later," he says.
People on Phuket recognise the horror of what has happened, but are looking forward to the future too. On Patong beach, where many people were drowned, the sandy waterfront is clear and behind the seafront there are huge piles of debris, which look like the photographs of ruined German cities in 1945.
The seafront bars are still closed but the area is a hive of activity, with Thais and foreign bar owners working to put things back. The hostelries are skeletal, but have a swept-up look. On Bangla Road, the main red-light district, the bar stools are mostly empty and many of the bar-girls have gone home.
But there is a feeling that they will come back, along with the tourists and the property buyers and the retirees. Many are hopeful that things will be up and running, in some shape or form, by the next tourist season.