Pupils mark Missing Day in national diary

Wednesday morning in Farmleigh House in Dublin will be an emotional time for the families of Ireland’s missing persons. It will also mark a notable achievement by some pupils of Davis College in Mallow, Co Cork, who campaigned for a designated day on which, annually, missing people and their families would be a centre of attention.

The inaugural Missing Persons Day will be launched by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter and he will be followed at the podium by Jacqui Walsh who will speak for her fellow students, and their teachers, at Davis College as to why it is important that the missing are not forgotten. It promises to be an emotional moment for them and even more so for the relatives of the missing.

The idea was born out of a transition year project on which Jacqui and her classmates embarked for the academic year 2011/2012. "We had a barnstorming session on what we would do and at the time Madeleine McCann was much in the news," says teacher Kathy Kilgannon.

"We figured it was time for a national Missing Persons Day so that the families of the missing feel they have an outlet for further appeals and I think it is also very cathartic for families to talk."

Forgotten
The pupils found that when interviewing families of the missing, there was a sense among them that the Disappeared were soon forgotten. "One of the overriding things to come out of the interviews was a feeling that after the initial hoo- haa, they were pushed aside by the next missing person," says Kilgannon.

This led to the creation of the “Forget Me Not” calendar in which missing people were highlighted, month by month, on the days of their disappearances, and each month was devoted to one missing person in particular. The calendar sold in supermarkets and helped fund the recovery of the body of a missing Galway teenager.

The pupils’ campaign then delivered a poster, displayed at air and sea ports, on which information was sought, either from a departing “missing” person, or from someone else who had information about a missing person.

Finally came a petition for a Missing Persons Day and an appeal to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality – an appeal, supported by President Michael D Higgins and Taoiseach Enda Kenny, that was backed by 12,000 signatures from school pupils around the country. Shatter and the committee had little hesitation embracing the idea.

For their efforts, the TY pupils at David College received gold from Young Social Innovators for 2011/2012 but the real prize will be Wednesday's ceremony at Farmleigh. It will be a big moment also for the volunteers who help run Missing in Ireland Support Service's helpline, the Garda and search and rescue personnel.

Reasons
Some 4,000 people go missing in Ireland every year for a variety of reasons including, in some instances, a simple desire to vanish and start over again with a "new life". More commonly, however, people disappear for reasons related to mental health, or due to family rows, or other personal difficulties, perhaps relating to substance abuse.

"We help people go through the trauma," says Ciaran Casey, the helpline co-ordinator at the Missing in Ireland Support Service. "We listen; it is basically listening. Other people will say ' . . . we're doing this and we're doing that' but we'll sit down and talk for hours and listen and say to [a worried relative] 'look, all we can do is help you emotionally; how are the children?' If we feel that the support we are giving is not sufficient, we can refer them to other counsellors."

Beginnings
The organisation was started at the instigation of Dermot Browne of Mullingar, whose son Derek went missing in June 2003 and subsequently took his own life. The shoestring charity, which has 23 trained volunteers around the country, operates during mornings from a vacant Department of Justice office on Harcourt Street and through a helpline. "Basically, it is a 24/7 helpline," says Casey. "Most of my work is when people ring up and say 'My son has gone missing. I don't know what to do'. "

And, it is not always grim news. Last month, the helpline was alerted to 12 missing persons. Two are deceased, one remains missing but nine have been found.

Further information from missingpersons.ie; helpline number 1890-442 552; the missing by choice line is 1800 -911 999 where a message to be passed on may be left