A search was continuing last night for a man who was feared drowned in the Avoca river at Arklow, Co Wicklow, after going swimming with a friend over the weekend.
Last Saturday night the Latvian man, a 28-year-old resident of Drogheda, had been out with a male friend who lives and works in Arklow. The pair had been drinking in a local pub and while walking home decided to go for a swim.
The men entered the Avoca at South Quay but it is feared only one of them made it back safely to the quayside.
Gardaí were alerted to the fact that something was amiss on Sunday at about 10.30am when a member of the force found the missing man's clothes still lying on the rocks.
They located the man's friend, who is understood to have thought the other man had got out of the river at another point and gone elsewhere.
Divers from the Garda Sub-Aqua unit, members of the Arklow lifeboat and local volunteers have been involved in a search of the river for the missing man since Sunday.
A seven-man Garda Water Unit arrived from Dublin yesterday morning and started combing the river bed about 10.30am, but up to last night no trace of the man had been found.
Searching an area in a radius around where the man's clothes were found and where he is believed to have entered the water, three Garda divers linked hands and conducted a finger-tip search of the river floor because the water is too murky to be able to see down to the river bed.
A Garda spokesman said last night the river was known to be "treacherous with strong currents".
The man's name was being withheld until family members in Latvia could be contacted.
The man who successfully managed to swim ashore was helping gardaí with their search.