The Cabinet is this month expected to approve new proposals for a co-ordinated and streamlined approach to locating the bodies of the "disappeared", based on information provided by IRA members who were directly involved in their killings, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
The recommendations mainly come from an English forensic expert who, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams confirmed yesterday, was directly assisted by IRA "primary sources" in trying to locate five bodies at different sites in the Republic where the IRA says these bodies are buried.
By "primary sources", Mr Adams said he meant IRA members involved in transporting the victims to the sites or in killing the victims or in burying them. Some IRA members implicated in the killings were already dead or killed during the Troubles, he added.
In the coming weeks, the Cabinet will be presented with a detailed report urging a "more coherent investigative approach" to finding the bodies based on proposals from the forensic expert, who also assisted in locating some of the victims of the Moors murderers.
Mr Adams said the forensic expert completed his report in February and was appointed to work for the cross-Border Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains last summer.
"The IRA met the forensic expert seven times over a 10-month period," said Mr Adams, who declined to comment on the recent IRA statement insisting that Jean McConville, murdered by the IRA and secretly buried on a beach in Co Louth in 1972, was an informer, despite Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan reporting that she was not.
Mr Adams added: "There were detailed discussions and specific information was provided on the five outstanding places. The forensic expert, accompanied by the IRA, visited all the sites and at some of the sites they were accompanied by individuals with primary knowledge."
In 1999, the IRA named nine people it killed and secretly buried. The bodies of four including Jean McConville were recovered. A number of unsuccessful searches were conducted for the remaining five: Séamus Wright and Kevin McKee, from west Belfast, who disappeared in 1972 near Navan, Co Meath; Columba McVeigh, Co Tyrone, last seen in 1975 at Bragan, Co Monaghan; Brendan Megraw, west Belfast, missing since 1978 at Oristown, Co Meath; and Danny McIlhone, killed in the late 1970s or very early 1980s, at Ballynultagh, Co Wicklow.