THE FAMILY of missing Wexford woman Fiona Sinnott have had to replace a plaque erected in her memory after the original one was stolen from a graveyard wall.
The plaque was erected on Friday night in Broadway Cemetery, Co Wexford, ahead of an unveiling ceremony planned for Saturday. However, on Saturday morning the plaque was gone.
A replacement was made at short notice and the ceremony went ahead as planned.
Mary Sinnott, the missing woman's mother, said she could not understand why anybody would want to steal the original.
"It was put on a wall in a disused old cemetery and in the spot it was in you couldn't see it when you were passing by.
"So somebody had to climb steps and make their way in and take it. It's incredible that such a thing would happen."
Mrs Sinnott said it was possible the plaque had been pulled from the wall in an act of vandalism. However, her family had not discounted the possibility that somebody who wanted to target the family was responsible.
"You'd have to consider that that's what might have happened," she said.
Fiona Sinnott, originally from Bridgetown, Co Wexford, has been missing presumed dead since February 8th, 1998, when the then 19-year-old was last seen drinking in Butler's pub in Broadway, near Rosslare.
The youngest of five siblings, Ms Sinnott had previously gone missing for a short period but had turned up safe and well.
As a result, her disappearance in 1998 was not reported to gardaí until February 18th. In the months following, an exhaustive search continued, matching the intensity of a murder inquiry.
A reconstruction of Ms Sinnott's disappearance featured on RTÉ's Crimelineprogramme, and a £50,000 reward was posted by the Irish Crimestoppers Trust. However, no new evidence emerged.
Ms Sinnott's case was one of a number examined under a specialist Garda investigation, named Operation Trace.
It was established in 1999 to investigate any possible links between a number of cases involving young women going missing in the Leinster area. No links were ever established.
Exactly two years ago, five people were arrested for questioning about the missing woman's disappearance, including the prime suspect in the case. However, all five were released without charge.
In 2006 gardaí excavated three sites in the Wexford area, but the searches yielded nothing.