Efforts were continuing yesterday to bring home the bodies of two young Irish students killed in a fire in France last Friday.
A family member told The Irish Times it was hoped the remains of Patricia McDonald (21), from Cootehill, Co Cavan, and Carol Nolan (20), from Walkinstown, Dublin, could be brought home before the weekend.
French experts have established that the two friends, who were students at the Institute of Technology in Tallaght, died of asphyxiation.
This followed a fire last Friday in the house they were renting in Lorient, which was caused by a burning cigarette, according to local police.
They were spending an academic year in France under the Erasmus student exchange programme.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said a search operation was continuing off the coast of Mexico for Lynsey O'Brien (15), from Dublin, who is believed to have fallen overboard from a cruise ship on Thursday morning. However, the spokeswoman said she was was not at liberty to provide any more details.
Lynsey, from Fortfield Road, Terenure, was on a family holiday on the Costa Magica cruise ship, off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, when she disappeared.
Liz Cogan, principal of Loreto High School Beaufort, Rathfarnham, where Lynsey was a transition-year student, said yesterday that students at the school were trying to come to terms with what had happened.
"They are comforting each other. It has brought the whole school together," she said.