A WOMAN who says she left Ms Josephine Dollard in a car with two men on the night she disappeared has been interviewed by gardai.
The woman has provided gardai with their first breakthrough in the case since Ms Dollard (21) disappeared while hitching home to Kilkenny on the night of November 9th last.
She initially made contact by making a 999 call last week, although she said then only that she knew Ms Dollard bad been taken to Carlow.
Ms Dollard had been making her way from Dublin to her home in Callan, Co Kilkenny. Until the woman came forward the last confirmed sighting of Ms Dollard at been at the village of Moone, Co Kildare.
The woman has told gardai that she was in a car which picked up Ms Dollard. She said she too had taken a lift in the car, which was occupied by two men. It is under stood that she said she thought both men had spoken with English accents.
She said the car had travelled to Carlow but she had got out, and left Ms Dollard in the company of the two men. She was unable to say what had happened afterwards.
The woman has been able to provide gardai with a description of the two men who are now the focus of the investigation.
The interview with the woman is the most significant development in the case since Ms Dollard's disappearance. She had been in Dublin collecting two weeks' social welfare payments last November and had planned to return home directly by bus on the same day.
However, she had stayed drinking in a pub with friends, missed the bus, and took a later one as far as Naas instead. From there she hitched to Moone and called a friend from a telephone box, telling her she was having difficulty stopping any cars.
During the call she left the box to flag down a car, and returned to the telephone box to say she had been offered a lift.
An eyewitness later said she saw Ms Dollard walking towards a dark coloured Toyota Carina car which had stopped at the side of the road at Moone, at about 11.40 pm..
The back door of the car had been opened, suggesting the front passenger seat was already occupied.
The woman who has now been interviewed is believed to have been in the car at the time, having taken a lift from the two men earlier that evening.
Until the woman made the 999 call and then came forward, nothing further was known about Ms Dollard's fate after taking the lift, although a number of unconfirmed sightings placed her further down the road towards home, at the village of Castledermot, Co Kildare, at about midnight.
No clues to her disappearance were turned up despite a widespread Garda and Civil Defence search of the countryside between Moone and Callan over the following weeks.
Gardai are now working on the case with renewed intensity and have centred the investigation on Carlow town.