Gardai are preparing to begin digging this weekend at up to nine locations in north Co Louth believed to contain the bodies of people killed by the IRA in the 1970s.
Details of the sites are expected to be given by the IRA to the Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains, which is to be formally established today by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Dr Mo Mowlam.
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, the former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, - who produced a report on victims of the Troubles last year - is the British representative on the commission and the former Tanaiste, Mr John Wilson, is to be nominated by Dublin.
At the end of March the IRA announced that it had identified the locations of the bodies of nine people which it killed and secretly buried. The announcement was welcomed by families of the victims, but two weeks later the relatives learned that the IRA did not intend to disclose the locations of the graves, until it was reassured that any evidence found when the bodies were uncovered would not be used for prosecution purposes. Both governments decided to set up the commission and to provide a limited immunity, which has been arranged quickly. In the Dail the Government introduced the Criminal Justice (Location of the Remains of Victims) Bill, while a similar measure was passed through both houses at Westminster, despite the opposition of Ulster Unionist and Democratic Unionist politicians who characterised it as an amnesty for IRA members.
The British legislation received the Royal assent last Wednesday night.
The list of the "disappeared" to be given to the commission by the IRA, along with precise details of bodies' locations, is understood to contain the same names as were on a list published in Sinn Fein's newspaper, An Phoblacht, on April 1st.
Once the details have been handed over a large detachment of gardai, assisted by specialist search units from the Defence Forces, is ready to quickly begin the search to recover the bodies.
The RUC also has teams of specially trained men on standby.
The list to be given today to the commission includes the name of Mrs Jean McConville (39), a mother of 10 who was abducted and murdered after giving assistance to a fatally injured British soldier outside her home on the Falls Road just before Christmas 1972.
A few days later eight masked men and four women from the IRA came to her home and abducted her in front of her screaming children. She was taken to south Armagh where she was interrogated, shot dead and then buried south of the Border.
Mrs McConville's husband had died of cancer a short while earlier and she had suffered a nervous breakdown. Her children were left abandoned that Christmas, looked after by the eldest child, 15-year-old Helen. Later the family was taken into care and eventually separated. The campaign to recover the bodies of the "disappeared" was spearheaded by Mrs McConville's daughters.
Families of the Disappeared campaigner Mr Seamus McKendry said he and his wife, Helen, had already made most of the funeral arrangements for her mother, Mrs McConville.
Mr McKendry said yesterday: "We haven't been sleeping. We're just waiting for the announcement at any minute and it's tough. We have been told it will be soon but don't know exactly when news will come."
The other people on the IRA list include: Mr Seamus Wright, from west Belfast who disappeared in 1972; Mr Kevin McKee, also from west Belfast who disappeared in 1975; Ms Columba McVeigh, from Co Tyrone, last seen in 1975; and Mr Bernard Megraw, from west Belfast who went missing in 1978.
Also named are: Mr John McClory and Mr Brian McKinney, friends from west Belfast who were abducted and killed on the same day in May 1978; Mr Eamon Molloy who disappeared from Belfast in 1975; and Mr Danny McIlhone who was also killed and buried in 1978.
It is not clear if the IRA will give the details of where a number of other men are buried, including three from south Armagh who are also believed to have been abducted and murdered.
There has been no indication if the IRA intends to say what happened to the British army undercover soldier, Capt Robert Nairac, who was killed by the south Armagh IRA in 1977. A former IRA member, Mr Eamon Collins, claimed Nairac's body was fed into a rendering machine at a meat processing factory in Dundalk. Mr Collins was killed by the IRA in February.