Coroner: Make a database of mystery bodies

25 years to find Denis ‘compounded’ family’s pain

- DAVID RALEIGH

A DATABASE of unidentified human remains should be established to help return them to their families, a coroner said.

Dr Ciaran MacLoughlin added it should be shared across all Garda stations and coroners’ offices.

Currently there is no official record of how many unidentified bodies are stored in hospital mortuaries or lying in graves.

Dr MacLoughlin was speaking at the inquest into the death of Denis Walsh Jr, whose family were informed last February that his partial body had in fact been discovered 25 years ago, held in a hospital mortuary for 18 years and eventually buried in a communal grave in Co Galway.