Saturday's sighting in central Paris of Mr Brendan Brady is the most encouraging development in the five-day search for the Irish man who went missing at EuroDisney last Wednesday. Lara Marlowe reports from Paris.
A tramp has told French police that he saw Mr Brady (42) , who suffers from a severely curved spine, in a park between the Auber RER train station and the Place Saint Augustin. Auber is on the A4 line which Mr Brady's group took to reach EuroDisney, in the town of Chessy, 45 km east of Paris. It is not clear if police obtained the information from one, or several, of the tramps who ride on the commuter train.
It is possible the tramp saw one of the "missing" posters which have been put up in train and metro stations and volunteered the information - or the police at Chessy may have singled out the tramps for questioning.
A CCTV taken in EuroDisney on the day of his disappearance showed Mr Brady wearing a black jumper and carrying an orange EuroDisney bag. EuroDisney's security guards searched the theme park thoroughly after closing on Wednesday.
There have also been reports that a train ticket collector told French police he saw Mr Brady, but neither RehabCare nor the Irish or French authorities know where and when that reported sighting occurred. Irish authorities have been told the ticket collector is away for training.
Mr Brady's group stayed at the Kyriad Hotel on the Avenue de Flandre in north-eastern Paris. On the day of his disappearance, they took the metro from La Villette to Nation and changed on to the RER suburban line, getting off at Chessy.
Chessy is a busy train station, with high speed TGV traffic as well as commuter trains. Mr Brady stutters, speaks no French and had only a small amount of euro currency in his pockets. He is said to be of a calm disposition and is accustomed to using public transport in Dublin on his own. Saturday's sighting strengthens the theory that he attempted to travel back to his hotel.
Mr Brady is believed to have been separated from the group when he stopped to watch a street entertainer in EuroDisney.
His disappearance has received virtually no coverage in the French media. Only the local Seine et Marne Nord edition of Le Parisien newspaper carried a short article asking readers to contact the Chessy police station if they saw Mr Brady. None of the major French dailies or television networks has mentioned him.
It was perhaps inevitable that RehabCare and the French police would come under fire. One source called it "a major slip-up" on the part of RehabCare that Mr Brady carried no identity papers.
RehabCare spokesman Mr Chris Masey said: "He had them in his bag. We have procedures before anyone goes anywhere - we give the directions and phone numbers. When they went into EuroDisney they left their bags at the security desk. To call it a major slip-up is unfair and inaccurate."
The group has hired the FHS public relations firm to interest French media in the Irishman's fate. RehabCare has also hired a French private detective agency to search for him.
Five RehabCare employees are in Paris, trying to enlist the support of French disability groups. They will begin running advertisements in newspapers tomorrow.
The Irish Ambassador to Paris, Mr Pádraic MacKernan, rejected rumours that French police did nothing for 48 hours after Mr Brady went missing. "French police have been fully engaged in a systematic fashion since day one," Mr MacKernan said.
"One needs to appreciate the fact that the police are looking for one man among 12 million people in the Paris area."
Mr Brady's disability could make it easier to help find him. The duty officer at the Irish Embassy is in contact with the central administration for hospitals in the Paris region, in the event Mr Brady is admitted to hospital.
A policeman at Chessy commissariat referred inquiries to an official at the Police Prefecture in Melun. "We entered all his data in departmental and national computer files for missing people on Wednesday night," said the official, who did not want to give her name. "Because he is foreign, Interpol was notified automatically."
All duty officers in the Seine-et-Marne department were on the look-out for Mr Brady, she added.