What can you tell us about that?

Well, this new information will corroborate what a woman was saying when she gave a witness statement in 2016, Justin.

She came forward to say that she had memory of being in a car herself with Eamon Cook that had left a location in Talla and had travelled down towards the Ballyroan Road.

And that a boy had got into the car and she remembered this and that she was making this statement 30 years after Philip disappeared, but that she believed that the boy was Philip Kearns.

She outlined in that statement that she had later seen Eamon Cook strike the boy.

with an object in the studios of Radio Dublin, and she hadn't seen the boy again.

So this was information Gardaí had in 2016.

What's going to happen now and what's the status of this investigation now?

How did he come in to this life of Bobby Ryan and his then girlfriend, Mary Lowry?

He had already put himself on the farm at Fauna Gown, where Bobby Ryan's body would later be found, because after his sister-in-law's husband, Martin Lowry, passed away in 2007, and a year later, Patrick Quirk, who's also a farmer, quite a successful farmer, and he's married to Martin's sister, Imelda.

But he then starts spending a lot of time on the farm that Martin had owned and had run and where the family home is of Mary and Martin Lowry.

So he starts spending an awful lot of time with Mary Lowry.

And through that, an affair begins.

And Patrick Quirk is a very interesting man because what I have seen of him, and I used to watch him walking in and out of court.

He was on bail throughout the murder trial.

Was he alone in court, Barry, when he walked in or did anybody go with him?

He kind of tried to spin this narrative that in some way she was abusive towards him.

Yeah, and that was his defence.

That was what he said to Gardaí when he was arrested in October 2023, maintaining that he had been the victim of violence and that Tina had struck him on many occasions.

And then he would say, and you know, you can check with the GP or somebody will attest to this, Gardaí went and checked it out.

Nobody had any record or any evidence to give to support what Richard said.

And it was this day last year, Shane, on the sentencing day, that Tina's sister Lorraine and her niece Sarah were finally able to address those claims by Richard which just didn't stand up but they were able to reclaim Tina's memory in a sense talk about the real Tina not the Tina Richard spoke of but the real Tina who was a very gentle person who had a lot of abilities but who had become trapped in a relationship which was controlling.

We don't know how controlling or for how long, except that Tina had become isolated and Richard had isolated her then in y'all as well.

Yeah.

My wife has," as he's put it, "left."

Yeah, it was towards the end of May into June that I became aware, and it was a simple thing that I keep an eye on all the Garda press releases that come, come in.

And one was about, uh, the, uh, the fact that a woman had disappeared from Youghal, and it was a general description of her.

And as sometimes happens in these initial descriptions, it might have had her height slightly wrong, an in- an inch or two wrong, but you're going by, uh, the best information you're given.

So the Garda get this information out, and I read it and said, "Okay," uh, but there are sadly so many people who disappear in Ireland.

Thankfully, most are found, but that these reports come in all the time.

So I was just aware of it.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

So, uh, after a lot of work and talking with, they had met with Richard again, and they had done this, uh, new type of interviewing, but it was, it, called enhanced cognitive interviewing, which is basically where you might be told you can close your eyes or keep them open, but we want you to talk in as much detail as you can for as long as you can about your memories, but only your memories.

Don't, don't be guessing things or whatever.

But through all of that, they were able to build up a big picture.

They knew, uh, through the cold case investigation, they'd been able to get access into, uh, his phones and to establish that when he said he was in certain places in March 2017, he wasn't there at the times he said he was.

Yeah, yeah

... over researching this.

But, um, it broke up quite quickly, and then there was this soil, uh, beneath-And he was able to use a, a sh- a, a, a l- a, a, a hand spade to, uh, dig into the ground and go right down up to arm level.

So I suppose if you want to, we can start with you taking us back there.

Yeah.

Well, I was late to the story because other reporters had spoken with Richard during 2017.

Uh, he had done interviews.

He'd been on RTE.

He'd been on TV3.

He, he had been on local radio, Cork 96, uh, and other places as well.

Yeah.