The families of Deirdre Donnelly O’Flaherty who went missing a decade ago have questioned a Garda decision to undertake a search for her remains.
The 46-year-old Strabane-based doctor has not been seen since January 11 2009, when her car was found at Kinnego beach, Co Donegal.
Gardaí last week carried out an excavation on land in Milford, Co Donegal, around 80km from the place of her disappearance.
Dr O’Flaherty had been staying with her family at a holiday home when she went missing.
However, the dig concluded on Friday with Gardaí later announcing that nothing new had been achieved from the search.
In January 2012, three years after she disappeared, the High Court in Belfast ruled it was satisfied that O’Flaherty had died.
The Donnelly and O’Flaherty families have now issued a joint statement expressing concerns about the Garda operation.
“The close and extended families of Dr Deirdre Donnelly O’Flaherty wish to express their heartfelt gratitude for the many kind and thoughtful messages of support which they have received over the course of what has been a tumultuous and distressing week leading up to the 10th anniversary of Deirdre’s disappearance on the 11th of January 2009,” they stated.
“The families are relieved only because this ordeal is over although in our view, the outcome was not in doubt.
“Notification that gardaí were going to carry out a land search for Deirdre was entirely unexpected, not least given that the finding by Order of Judge Deeney at Belfast High Court on the 12th of January 2012 that Deirdre had ‘gone into the water and drowned’ was supported by the oral evidence of the investigating Garda Sergeant.
“As far as the families are aware there has not in fact been any ongoing search for Deirdre since at least that time.
“The families had only three days’ advance notice of the gardaí excavations near Milford, County Donegal and therefore had little time to prepare for the consequences of the very public, national exposure of this story during the week”.
