The bodies of a brother and sister who drowned after they got into difficulty while swimming off Ballybunion in north Kerry on Thursday evening have been recovered.
The two siblings, who are understood to have been in their 50s and from Co Roscommon, have not been named.
The alarm was raised some time before 7pm when the Irish Coast Guard Marine Rescue Co-Ordination Centre in Valentia received a call and a large search and rescue operation was put into place.
The Irish Coast Guard Sikorsky helicopter Rescue 115 was tasked from Shannon while both the Ballybunion community inshore rescue boat and Kilrush RNLI lifeboat were also launched.
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The body of one of the swimmers was brought ashore while the operation was being launched and the person was pronounced dead by a local GP as the search operation for the second person began.
The second casualty was recovered from the water by the Ballybunion community inshore rescue boat and brought ashore where they too were pronounced dead by the local GP.
It’s understood that both bodies have been removed to University Hospital Kerry in Tralee for postmortems, which will form part of a Garda file into the tragedy for inquests at the Coroner’s Court.
Gardaí have begun taking witness statements from people who were in the area at the time but no further details have been released.
