The Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that three Irish people are dead following Tuesday's attack on the World Trade Center in New York, while many other families wait anxiously for news.
Mr Patrick Joseph Currivan (52), an engineer who was resident in Paris, has been confirmed dead along with Ms Ruth McCourt, from Cork, and her daughter Juliana.
Mr Currivan, a Trinity College Dublin graduate, was among the victims of the FA-11 Boston to Los Angeles United Airlines flight which crashed into the World Trade Centre.
He was en route from Paris to Los Angeles to attend a conference and stopped off in Boston to spend time with friends.
Mr Currivan was a past president of the Boston Trinity College Dublin alumni branch. His friend, Ms Anne McMonagle, from Dublin and currently living in Boston, who was also involved with the alumni organisation, spoke to The Irish Times this evening.
"He phoned me on Monday night to find out how the association was going. He was all enthusiastic. He was in fantastic form. He was a great character," she said.
His sister, who still lives in Ireland, has been informed.
Meanwhile, the family of a 35-year-old construction worker from Sligo, believed to be among those killed in the attack, are still waiting anxiously for news.
Mr Kieran Gorman (35), from Carrowcurragh, Lavagh, Co Sligo, was one of a group of labourers working on the 97th floor of the World Trade Centre tower number one when the first hijacked airliner crashed into the second tower.
He phoned his wife, Ann, after the explosion and said he was "getting out". A spokesman for the family said it was "very, very worrying" that Mr Gorman had not contacted anyone since.
Mr Gorman has been living in Woodlawn, the Bronx for nine years with his wife, Ann, and two children. His family in Sligo include his mother, Ann, three brothers, Micheal, Eamon and John and sister, Ann-Marie.
"They're really, really devastated by the combination of uncertainty and the appalling pictures they're seeing. They are seeing all these really eerie, unbelievable pictures and there's the knowledge that their son, a young lad from a rural community in south Sligo, was caught up in it," the spokesman said.
"He worked with a construction company - he wasn't one of these high-flying types. He was doing his best to get on and bring up his family. He was a big strong handsome six-foot-four fellow. At the same time as he was physically powerful, he was a shy guy. And looking at the pictures, you can only imagine how helpless he was."
Mr Gorman stayed involved in the Irish community in New York. Every Sunday night, he would call home to get the GAA results. He had been goalkeeper for the Sligo team.
Mr Gorman returned to Ireland for a holiday with his family this summer. His wife and children stayed for seven weeks but he went back to New York.
At the weekend he came back to Ireland to collect his family.
"He went back on Monday to the States and his company had a job on and needed people in. He wasn't expected to start working until later in the week but he went in on Tuesday. That's the kind of fellow he was."
Mr Gorman is understood to have been working for a construction company called Structure Tone Inc. When contacted yesterday, a spokeswoman for the company said Structure Tone Inc had a large number of Irish and Irish American employees and they could not provide any more detailed information.
Also missing is Mr Martin Coughlan (53), a carpenter from Tipperary who had been living in Queens for 14 years. Mr Martin and his wife, Catherine, have four daughters: Orla, who is married, Ailish, Sinead and Denise.
In Tipperary, his sister-in-law, Ms Bridget Coughlan , said the family was hoping for a miracle.
"We're hoping, praying that some miracle might happen and he'll be found but as time goes on it's just so hard to believe it. Things are looking very bad and we're just praying and hoping and trying to support each other," she said.
"You never think something like this would hit you, your family, your home." She has been in constant con tact with his Mr Coughlan's wife, Catherine.
"She just doesn't believe it, I suppose. It's so hard to believe somebody you love is gone. I just don't know how she's coping really. She just has the girls around her. We can't do any thing from here."
Ms Anne-Marie McHugh (35) from Tuam, Co Galway, who worked on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center, is missing. Ms McHugh escaped from the building when it was attacked by terrorists in 1993.
Family friend and president of the Tuam Chamber of Commerce, Mr Donagh Killilda, said her family were "traumatised" with worry.
Miss McHugh's parents, Padraig and Margaret, own a pub in the town. Her brother, Brendan, has travelled home from London and her sister, Maura, has come from Dublin.
"The family has had no word at all. The waiting is traumatising them at the moment. It affects every person in the whole community," Mr Killilda said.
"Padraig is a well-respected member of the community. We wish him and the family our heart-felt sympathies and hope it has a positive outcome. We hope they do get news and it's good news."
Meanwhile, Irish-American friends of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams are feared to be among the dead in New York.
They include a priest and a man who once organised a lunch on the top floor of the World Trade Centre to raise money for the party in Ireland.
Mr Adams said: "I'm told by friends in New York that there is little hope of finding him alive. Others we met that day are almost certainly part of the casualty list."
