The family of a Belfast man whose body was found in Dublin’s Phoenix Park but not identified for 13 months, has met the police ombudsman as part of its investigation into the case.
James O’Neill’s body was discovered in November 2023 but he was not identified until December 2024 when nine forms of ID were found on a subsequent search of his clothes by a forensic anthropologist.
On Monday Mr O’Neill’s family met Fiosrú, the Office of the Garda Ombudsman, which is investigating the Garda handling of the case and how the various forms of IDs went undiscovered during the initial postmortem.
Paul O’Neill, James’s father, told The Irish Times that overcoming the “hurdle” of meeting Fiosrú as “a relief”.
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“I think they genuinely were listening to us,” he said of the meeting.
The Irish Times reported details of the case last month, which a solicitor representing the O’Neill family described as “baffling”.
The family’s complaint to Fiosrú raised questions about why there was no public appeal by the Garda about the discovery of unidentified remains and the Garda’s handling of its interactions with the family after identification.
“Our whole intention here is not to go after someone or prove some sort of a point,” Mr O’Neill said.
Their objective was to “drive a process to get something done about it,” he said.
“We’re in our 70s,” Mr O’Neill said of he and his wife, Ann.
“It’s not something we particularly want to be doing at this stage of our life ... But this is not just to have these issues resolved for us, for our family, and particularly for Jim’s two children.
“It’s so that hopefully lessons can be learned from the whole thing, and measures can be taken that will hopefully prevent this from happening to any other person and any other family.”
Mr O’Neill characterised the errors in the case resulting in his son’s body going unidentified for 13 months as “a systemic failure”.
“This is something that should concern the wider public. It needs to be looked at and for serious measures to be put in place so that these kind of things cannot be allowed to happen,” he said.
The family has asked that the inquest into Mr O’Neill’s death be delayed until a report is completed by former state pathologist of Northern Ireland, Professor Jack Crane, they hired to conduct an independent postmortem last year.
James O’Neill – or Jim, as he was known – was from Belfast but living in Dublin at the time of his death.
His family describe him as a highly intelligent man who lived nomadically, often outdoors and intentionally didn’t own a phone.
He was often out of touch with his family, though he had called to his parents’ home in Belfast around a month before his body was found.
