For the family of Eamonn Molloy, their anguish is over. They can now make arrangements for his funeral - 24 years after he disappeared. The family's priest, Father Patrick McCafferty, said there were mixed emotions after it was announced yesterday that a coffin, said to contain his body, had been found in cemetery in Dundalk, Co Louth.
Mr Molloy disappeared in 1975. His body was found in a coffin in the old Faughart cemetery, under a rhododendron tree, bedecked with ribbons, rosary beads and miraculous medals.
Father McCafferty said Mr Molloy had got caught up in the awful tragedy which erupted at that time. This was a day the nine families longed for. "The family are obviously very distressed but they are coping with great dignity and great courage. They are relieved. This is what the families have been longing for and, now this day has come, but it is a day of mixed emotions."
Mr Molloy's family had said it was also a time "of great grief and great sorrow". The pain of all those years is now focused very much. They have to come to terms with that and try to cope. The pain is very raw. They have had all this anxiety and distress for all these years and even though they've got the news they were waiting for, the agony will go on."
Father McCafferty said for some families, the anguish might never end. "The circumstances of these deaths are particularly grotesque with families being deprived of the right to bury their loved ones, but at least it has come to an end."
Ms Mary McClory (65), whose son Brian is among the missing IRA victims, was contacted by a west Belfast priest, Father Alex Reid, yesterday to inform her after it was revealed that a body found in Dundalk was not her son's. "Father Reid assured me that it wasn't John. I'm disappointed, I suppose, but hopefully it won't be long now before I can give my son a proper burial," Ms McClory, who is recovering from a stroke, said.
Brian (17) and a friend, Brian McKinney (23), disappeared in June 1978. Last Christmas RUC officers dug up ground at Glen Road in west Belfast, after a claim that a body was buried there, but nothing was found. "It has been an awful strain, absolutely terrible. Maybe this will be the beginning of the end of the nightmare." Mr Seamus McKendry is spokesman of Families of the Disappeared. His mother-in-law, Ms Jean McConville, was included in the IRA list of bodies it has identified. Mr McKendry and his wife Helen have campaigned for the bodies to be returned to their families.
Ms McConville, a mother of 10, was kidnapped and murdered in 1972. Mr McKendry said the family has been assured that they would receive news soon, but the hard bit was only starting with funeral arrangements to be made.
His wife, Helen, was waiting anxiously for the call to say her mother has been found. "It seems to be a gruesome process of recovery. Gruesome is an understatement, but hopefully we will not have to wait much longer."