It's one of the worst things that can happen to any family. Every year, hundreds of Irish people go missing from their homes, and the Garda are called in to investigate. In most cases, the disappearance is solved within days, weeks or months, but in a few tragic instances, relatives never find out for sure what has happened to their loved ones. Missing, a moving documentary showing in RTE's True Lives slot on Monday, takes three such stories and looks at them from the perspectives of the families and of the investigating gardai. What emerges in each case is deep anger on the part of relatives at what they see as the inadequate resources and unsatisfactory communication skills of the Garda.
"We began by looking more widely at the area, and I can certainly say that these three stories are typical of the anger felt by many families," says Missing's producer, Adrian Lynch. "The central focus of the film is on this lack of a modern, centralised body to investigate these cases."
Each story has its own particular circumstances, and raises its own questions. Michael Farrell, a 31-year-old Dubliner who worked as a projectionist with Irish Ferries, disappeared on a routine sailing to Wales in September, 1994, leaving his wife and three children. Eva Brennan, aged 39, left her parents' home in Terenure after a row on July 23rd, 1993, and was never seen again. The best-known case is that of Jo Jo Dullard, who disappeared in November, 1995 while hitch-hiking from Dublin to her hometown in Callan, Co Kilkenny.
In all three cases, the pain and frustration of the families is palpable. Trapped in a nightmare with no prospect of resolution, they clearly welcome the opportunity to communicate their anger. Lynch agrees that the bewilderment and trauma of losing a loved one in this way is likely to cause relatives to cast around for someone to blame, but believes their anger at the failure of the system is justified. "They feel the gardai aren't dealing with their problems. For the families, even the explanation of murder would be a good one," he says. "But there is no doubt the absence of a central agency is quite a dangerous thing."
The Garda Missing Persons Bureau, as the film shows, is just a library facility of old-fashioned, paper files, which makes it extremely difficult to trace connections between cases from different parts of the country. "Computerisation has been around for 20 years, so it's disturbing that the Garda still haven't been able to computerise this information," says Lynch. Lynch's company, Graph Films, last week showed Missing to some of the gardai who had contributed to the film. "They were very happy with it, because they are looking to change the way things are run," he says.
Missing is on RTE 1 at 8 p.m. on Monday