Wasteland search for child missing presumed dead
· BBC NewsEimear Flanagan
BBC News NI
The search for eight-year-old Kyran Durnin has extended from his former family home in County Louth to a section of wasteland at the rear of the property.
Kyran was reported missing at the end of August but last week gardaí (Irish police) said the boy is now "presumed dead" and they began a murder investigation.
His family lived in a house in Emer Terrace, Dundalk, until May 2024 and a forensic search of the rented property began on Tuesday.
The terraced house is about 20 miles north of the town of Drogheda, from where Kyran and his mother were reported missing on 30 August.
His 24-year-old mother, Dayla Durnin, has since been located and therefore is no longer considered a missing person.
When they began the search on Tuesday, gardaí stressed that the current tenants of the house in Emer Terrace "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.
It is understood that Kyran attended St Nicholas Monastery national [primary] school until the summer of 2022, but the school told BBC News NI it could not comment on the tragedy during an ongoing garda investigation.
The Durnin family’s previous contacts with Irish child protection services are 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.
'Child protection is everyone’s business'
Tanya Ward, chief executive of the Children's Rights Alliance in the Republic of Ireland, described Kyran's disappearance as "shocking and disturbing".
"How could a child go missing from their family and their community for two years and nobody report it to any authorities?" she asked.
Ms Ward said it was "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".
She 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".
Purported move to Northern Ireland?
Conor Lally, security and crime editor of The Irish Times, said: "It really is a heart-breaking case. It's also a very unusual case."
He described it as "worrying" that Kyran's last known school attendance was more than two and a half years ago.
"It does appear from speaking to gardaí sources that, at that stage, the family had floated the idea locally that they were going to relocate to Northern Ireland," Mr Lally told Good Morning Ulster.
He said the fact that Kyran did not return to school for the start of the following 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".
Last weekend, following the announcement that Kyran's disappearance was being treated as murder, candlelit vigils were organised in Dundalk and Drogheda.
The first took place in Market Square in Dundalk on Saturday evening and then a separate vigil was held outside St Peter's Cathedral in Drogheda on Sunday.
Brittany McEnteggart, who organised the Dundalk event, told BBC News NI she had been following the case closely since Kyran was first reported missing last month.
She said she was "angry" that a child could disappear for so long without any alarms being raised.
"How could a child just be taken out of school without anyone following it up?" she asked.
Ms McEnteggart has lived in Dundalk for the past 14 years but grew up in the foster care system in the USA and said Kyran's case "touched a chord" with her.
She said she felt Kyran's disappearance was not taken seriously enough soon enough and vigils were an important way of keeping the case in the public eye.
She estimated that at least 50 people attended last Saturday's event but she hopes for a larger crowd at her next vigil planned for the same venue next Monday.
At the scene: Lyndsey Telford in Dundalk
From outside Kyran's former family home, there was little sign that a major search operation was under way.
With the exception of a couple of garda cars and two boarded-up alleyways, it was business as usual on the main road that the terrace house sits on.
The activity on Wednesday was behind Emer Terrace, where a digger had been brought in to search land at the back of the property.
Officers in forensics gear could be seen as the dig got under way.
One local resident told me they just could not believe that something so "horrific" was happening on their doorstep.