A seven-year-old boy and a man in his 60s drowned in a boating accident off the Co Louth coast last evening.
A search for two others, including a boy of 10, is to resume at first light today.
They were part of a group of eight on board the boat when it capsized around teatime.
Two girls, aged 10 and 12, and a man were rescued from the sea by an Irish Marine Emergency Services helicopter off Dunany Point, near Clogherhead, after another man had swum the 1 1/2 miles to shore to raise the alarm, gardai said.
All those on board are believed to have been from two families from the area. Four men had gone to sea with two girls and two boys yesterday afternoon.
A full-scale search co-ordinated by the Irish Marine Emergency Services (IMES) began at 6:30 p.m. and continued until late last night.
Teams of people helped comb the shoreline between Clogherhead and Dunany as the Sikorsky helicopter flew overhead.
The Clogherhead and Skerries lifeboats, Drogheda River Rescue and local fishermen also took part, along with the local IMES units.
Details were slow to emerge of who had been on the boat and what had happened. It appears the group was in a fibreglass boat with an outboard motor when it capsized.
Sometime later the Clogherhead lifeboat recovered the bodies of one of the two boys and one of the adults.
They were brought ashore around 11 p.m. and removed to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.
The four survivors were brought to the hospital for medical attention.
There was no public lighting along the coast road at Dunany and the silhouettes of dozens of concerned people could be seen clearly against the horizon as they looked out to sea and prayed for good news.
A few believed they had seen the boat with its crew in the sea that afternoon. They said it appeared to be about 12 ft long and had an outboard motor.
Two fishermen said the water would have been choppy to someone in such a vessel.
One local man simply said, "It is a sad, sad day."