Gardaí who last Thursday began digging up part of a field in Co Wexford in connection with the disappearance of a local woman, Fiona Sinnott, have called off the operation after finishing their examination of the area.
A Garda press office spokeswoman said nothing had been found during the excavation of the field near Killinick, Co Wexford, and there were no plans to conduct further searches.
Ms Sinnott (19), who had one child, disappeared in south Wexford in February 1998. She was last seen leaving a pub in the village of Broadway, near Rosslare.More than a dozen gardaí, including members of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Garda Technical Bureau, assisted in the search of the area.
Six people from the county were arrested last September in connection with the investigation. All were released without charge after questioning.
Mary Sinnott, has previously said she believed her daughter was murdered and her body concealed somewhere by her killer.
Supt Pat Delaney, who oversaw the excavation, said it was "a specific dig for a specific purpose". The area was logged and mapped professionally, he added. "We will now go back and re-evaluate what took place over the three days. It's very much part of the case despite the fact that it has not solved anything for us at the moment.
"This was an operation that took us a month to plan for. We availed of all the scientific data. Forensic experts excavated an area in the middle of the beet field, using geo-imaging equipment to establish if any of the earth in the area had been disturbed at the location."
The dig was the result of a fresh line of inquiry which was opened up last September after a farmer reported that some of the soil on his land might have been disturbed about the time Ms Sinnott went missing.
After the dig concluded on Saturday afternoon, Gerry Sinnott, one of Ms Sinnott's uncles, appealed for anyone with information to come forward. "All we want is to get Fiona into a grave with her father and have her name on a headstone," he said.
"We don't want to be going around looking in ditches . . . I appeal to those who know [ anything] to come forward and end the families' agony."