While some 20 Irish people are now believed to be missing one week after the attack in New York, the Irish consulate, based in Manhattan, estimates the number of second generation Irish-Americans missing is much higher. These include many of the hundreds of New York fire fighters and police officers who died during the initial stages of the rescue effort.
Many of the missing Irish were working for financial companies in the Twin Towers.
Father Tom Flynn, an Irish chaplain at the Aisling Irish Community Centre in the Bronx, has spent much of the past week establishing who is missing.
People have begun to accept that the chances of anyone being rescued is virtually nil. Official sources say there is hope that people who did not consider themselves to be in any danger, and thus failed to contact family, will get in touch and rule themselves out, but there is also a fear that there might have been other documented or undocumented people in the area at the time of the attacks. Those confirmed dead are Ms Ruth McCourt (44), who was born in Cork but lived in Westford, Massachusetts, and her daughter Juliana (4), who perished on the hijacked Boston flight which hit one of the Towers. Mr Patrick Currivan, (52) from Drimnagh in Dublin, also died when the hijacked Boston-Los Angeles flight hit the Trade Centre. The fourth person is Father Mychael Judge, the Irish-American chaplain of the New York City fire department.
Relatives of those missing have been arriving in New York.
Father Flynn said those missing include Ms Anne Marie McHugh, a stockbroker whose family are from Tuam, Co Galway; three construction workers, including Kieran Gorman (35) from Lavagh, Co Sligo; Sean Canavan (39), whose parents live on Long Island; and Martin Coughlan (53) from Tipperary. The missing also include Ms Joanne Creegan from Churchtown, Dublin, who was working with Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street trading house, and Mr John Moran, Irish-born but living in Britain most of his life, who was on a business tri.
