A search has resumed for a man missing after being swept into the sea by waves while out walking near Baltimore in West Cork in Tuesday evening.
Another man and a woman drowned in the incident.
It’s understood that the three - a father, his son and the son’s girlfriend - were walking on rocks near the Beacon at the mouth of Baltimore Harbour when the accident happened around 5.30pm.
The three were named locally last night as Barry Ryan who was in his 50s, his son, Barry Davis Ryan who was in his early 20s and his girlfriend, Niamh O’Connor who was also in her early 20s.
It’s understood Ms O’Connor was swept into the sea by a freak wave and both Mr Davis Ryan and Mr Ryan then entered the water to try and rescue her but all three were swept away.
A fourth person in the group, the teenage daughter of Mr Ryan and sister of Mr Davis Ryan, witnessed the incident and raised the alarm, contacting the emergency services,
A major rescue operation was launched by the Irish Coastguard Marine Rescue Co-ordination Centre on Valentia island in Co Kerry and local emergency services in Baltimore responded immediately.
The RNLI all weather lifeboat, The Alan Massey was launched together with the Baltimore RNLI Inshore Boat and the Schull Community Rescue Boat also joined the search operation.
The Irish Coastguard Sikorsky helicopter, Rescue 117 was also scrambled from its base in Waterford while its sister helicopter, Rescue 115 was dispatched from Shannon to assist with the search.
Sometime around 6.30pm, two casualties, believed to Mr Ryan and Ms O'Connor, were recovered from the sea by The Alan Massey and brought back to the lifeboat station at Bull Point.
Both casualties were unconscious and in a critical condition and paramedics carried out CPR on shore but they were both pronounced dead at the scene and removed to Cork for postmortems.
Meanwhile the girl who witnessed the tragedy was deeply traumatised and was last night being comforted by friends following the death of her father and disappearance of her brother.
