Digging could begin again within a month at five sites, mainly in the Border area of the Republic, where the Provisional IRA has said it buried the bodies of six people whom it murdered in the 1970s.
The Commission for the Disappeared yesterday issued a statement saying it had decided to resume the searches which were called off last summer after the bodies of only three of the nine people identified by the IRA were discovered.
Sources close to the searches say their renewal is to tie up loose ends and will involve extending the sites which were extensively dug up last summer. Digging could begin within a month if the ground remains dry. The commission's joint chairmen, Mr John Wilson in the Republic and Sir Ken Bloomfield in Northern Ireland, yesterday is sued a statement saying there would be a renewal based on new information.
The searches began last May after the IRA produced the body of Eamon Molloy from Belfast, at a graveyard in Co Louth. After two months of digging, the Garda recovered the bodies of John McClory (17) and Brian McKinney (22) at a bog at Colgagh, Co Monaghan.
The most extensive search was for Ms Jean McConville, the west Belfast widow who was abducted in 1972 in front of her 10 young children, murdered and apparently buried at a beach on the Cooley peninsula in Co Louth.