The contacts followed fresh information being passed to the Irish government by the IRA and were intended to assess what more could be done to find the bodies of two of the so-called “disappeared”: Jean McConville and Columba McVeigh.
The Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, said he has no doubt that the IRA has done all it can to locate the bodies of the nine people it has admitted killing and burying in previously undisclosed locations.
The IRA said on Sunday that it hoped “the remains found last week on a beach in County Louth will bring closure to the trauma and suffering endured by the McConville family.”
DNA testing is under way to ascertain whether the human remains are those of Jean McConville, who was abducted and killed by the IRA in December 1972. She was a Protestant-born mother of 10 children who converted to Catholicism when she married her husband.
The IRA had accused her of allowing her apartment to be used to record meetings that led to the deaths of residents in the Divis Flats area of the Lower Falls. This is strenuously denied by her family.
They said the reason she was killed was that she had gone to the aid of a dying British soldier in the area and was known to be a Protestant. Whatever the truth, she was taken from her home and never seen alive again.
Her son Michael McConville said, after studying clothing taken from the burial site, that he recognized a sweater, while a daughter, Helen McKendry, said she did not and feared the remains were not of her mother.
The bones, which are reportedly of a woman who was shot once in the back of the head, were found by a man and his children digging on the beach, not far from where a 71-day dig had failed to find any remains in 1999.
The IRA statement released after the discovery said: “Over a month ago we passed on specific information in relation to sites where the bodies of Jean McConville and Columba McVeigh were buried.”
McVeigh was a 17-year-old youth from Donaghmore in County Tyrone who was abducted from his home in 1975. His body has never been found, although the IRA has admitted killing him.
The IRA statement on Sunday said that in the course of a new review, it had revisited in detail each of the remaining five cases where bodies have not been discovered.
In March 1999, the IRA revealed the outcome of an 18-month investigation to locate the grave of nine people “executed and buried” from 1972-81. It said its intention had been to do all within its power “to redress injustices for which we accept full responsibility and to alleviate the suffering of the families, particularly those who have been unable to bury or properly mourn their relatives.”
Commenting on the finding of human remains in County Louth, SDLP justice spokesperson Alban Maginness said: “There have been many false expectations for the McConville family. One hopes that these remains can be authenticated so that both Jean McConville and her family can have some peace.”