The family of Jean McConville who was murdered by the IRA in 1972 believes the body found in Co Louth yesterday is their mother's.
Mrs McConville's son Michael (41) said this evening that after seeing the body he believed it was that of his mother. He said he recognised a jumper which was found at the scene.
"From what I have seen today I do think it is my mother. There is a sense of relief. No one understands how much pressure we have been through over the last 30 years," he said.
Mrs McConville's daughter, Helen McKendry, said she hoped the discovery would end the family's misery.
"All these years waiting and not knowing anything but we have always had thefeeling the body was there," she said
"I'm just hoping and praying it is so we can have an end to all this, but ourhopes have been raised so many times."
Security sources earlier confirmed that preliminary postmortem results show the person had died of a single gunshot to the head.
Over the next few days the remains will be taken to the forensic laboratory in Dublin where further tests will be carried out. The remains were discovered in a foot-deep grave at Shelling Hill beach, near Carlingford, around lunchtime yesterday by a man out walking with children.
Gardaí have said it may take up to two months until the results of DNA testing can be conclusively known and the body can be formally identified.
This afternoon, the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, extended his sympathy to the McConville family.
"The brutal, cowardly and vicious and sectarian murder by the IRA of their mother so many years ago is a crime which still is a huge mark of shame for people who claim to act in the name of Irish republicanism," he said.
"I welcome the fact that the McConville family at last are getting hope and that their period of emotional torture is beginning to come to an end."
In 1999, the IRA offered to help locate the bodies of the nine so-called Disappeared. Three bodies were uncovered in various locations, but Mrs McConville was never found, despite extensive excavations.
Two searches - one lasting 50 days - of Templetown beach were carried out during the summer of 1999 and May 2002.
Ten McConville children were left orphaned after their mother was abducted by a gang of 12 men in December 1972.
There are a number of claims over why Mrs McConville, then aged 37, was taken away by the IRA in 1972. A Protestant, she had married a Catholic, Arthur McConville, who predeceased her 11 months earlier.
One theory was that she was abducted, questioned and killed because she went to the aid of a British soldier who was lying wounded outside her door. It was also claimed that Mrs McConville was shot because she was an informer, a claim vehemently denied by the family.