Search to resume for child missing presumed dead
· BBC NewsGardaí (Irish police) investigating the suspected murder of an eight-year-old boy are expected to resume a forensic search at his former family home in County Louth.
Kyran Durnin was reported missing in Drogheda at the end of August, but last week gardaí said he is now "presumed dead" and they began a murder investigation.
The terraced property being searched in Dundalk - about 20 miles north of Drogheda - was his family's home for several years until May 2024.
The search at the rented property in Emer Terrace, in Dundalk, began on Tuesday.
Technical and forensic examinations are being carried out in the house, the garden and adjoining open ground at the rear of the terrace is also being searched.
Gardaí stressed on Tuesday that the "current tenants of this house are not connected in anyway with Kyran or his disappearance".
Although the missing person inquiry began less than two months ago, Irish broadcaster RTÉ previously reported that detectives believe Kyran may have been killed more than two years ago, external.
"How could a child go missing from their family and their community for two years and nobody report it to any authorities?" asked Tanya Ward, chief executive of the Children's Rights Alliance in the Republic of Ireland.
"It’s shocking and disturbing and confounding really for those of us that work with children and young people because Ireland has really clear children-first laws and child protection is everyone’s business."
Ms Ward told the BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme that it was "the kind of case that’s keeping everyone awake to be honest, that this could happen in Ireland in 2024".
The Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Simon Harris has also expressed his concern over the case, describing it as "utterly horrifying".
The family’s previous contact with Irish child protection services is now the subject of an independent national review.
Tusla, the state agency responsible for child welfare and protection, has also said it it carrying out an internal review of its interactions with Kyran's family.
Purported move to Northern Ireland?
"It really is a heart-breaking case. It's also a very unusual case," said Conor Lally, security and crime editor of The Irish Times.
He told Good Morning Ulster it was "worrying" that Kyran's last known school attendance was more than two and a half years ago.
"It does appear from speaking to garda sources that, at that stage, the family had floated the idea locally that they were going to relocate to Northern Ireland.
"So the fact Kyran didn't return to school then for the following start of the academic year wouldn't have really raised any concern because people believed that the family were relocating out of that area."
BBC News NI has asked Tusla if its staff had been led to believe that the family had moved to Northern Ireland, but the agency declined to answer that question.
Neither the gardaí nor the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) will confirm if any investigations have been carried out in Northern Ireland in relation to Kyran's disappearance.
The PSNI referred all queries to the gardaí as it is the force leading the investigation, but a garda spokeswoman said she could not "comment on the specifics of any investigative actions".