The head of the aid agency Goal has said he hopes the Department of Defence can play a role in securing the return of the Irish aid worker and her colleague kidnapped last night in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Sharon Commins (32) was among three people kidnapped by armed men at a compound run by the aid agency in Kutum, near Darfur, along with a Ugandan colleague, Hilda Kawuki (42) and a security guard.
John O’Shea said today that despite two similar kidnappings in recent months, the taking of the Goal workers had come as a "great shock".
He said Goal had always had a very warm welcome in the area in its 25 years working in Darfur.
Speaking on RTÉ's Marian Finucane programme, Mr O'Shea said there were a lot of people and entities, including the Irish Government, working on the case. He hoped it would be brought to a “satisfactory conclusion” and that the two aid workers would be rescued.
Mr O’Shea said Ms Commins had worked as his "left-hand person" in Goal before she sought a new challenge and went to Sudan, initially working in Khartoum.
She had been in Darfur, a more challenging region, for about a year and a half, he said.
He said she was a woman with a lot of ability in the media and PR area – a very “switched-on young lady, very clever, very intelligent".
She was “anything but” a novice, Mr O’Shea said.
“Because she is such a switched-on woman, I am confident that…she will handle herself better than a lot of people who wouldn’t have the qualities that this lady has.”
He agreed the uncertainty was difficult for Ms Commins's family.
“Like all mothers worry about their children, all fathers of course too. So when they don’t know, it’s this uncertainty…where are they, what’s happening to them, what could happen to them.
"Of course it’s a huge worry. But I’m now comforted in the knowledge that the Irish Government, particularly the Department of Foreign Affairs is taking a very keen interest in this.
"I’m hoping that later today they may involve the Department of Defence as well and try to find a way of getting some experts in the security area or individuals who have worked in disaster situations in the past who would be aware of how best to deal with a situation where a kidnap has taken place.”
Mr O'Shea said he wanted to see everything brought to bear on the rescue effort.
He said he could not comment on whether the kidnapping might have been carried out solely for a ransom or for political reasons, as he did not know.
“When no note is left, no words are exchanged, I can’t really be certain of anything other than Goal have played no political role in our 24 or 25 years in Sudan.”
The agency dealt with people turning up in "desperate need" and helped them, he said.
He said the agency's clinics, schools and feeding centres had been "open to all".
In Darfur, he said, it would also be “quite impossible to know what is going on" among the "multitude of warring factions”.
Mr O'Shea said there had been no "ripple" effect following the eviction of 13 aid agencies from Darfur several months ago and Goal had had no problems since.
The area in which it operated was "peaceful" and, to his knowledge, had not been visited by any of the rebel groups.
“We keep praying and at this stage I think prayer is very important.”
Fine Gael's foreign affairs spokesman Billy Timmins said he would raise the issue of the safety of aid workers in the Darfur region with the Sudanese ambassador Omar Siddigi when he meets him in Dublin next Wednesday.
He called on the Minister for Foreign Affairs to use "all avenues open to him" to secure the release of Ms Commins.