Two Killarney teenagers who ran away from home four weeks ago have been reunited with their parents in Southport, near Liverpool.
Police in Southport said detectives found Bryga Lewis and Serena Horgan, both aged 15, walking along the promenade in the town on Monday evening. They were kept overnight in the local police station before their parents travelled from Ireland to meet them yesterday morning.
The girls left their Co Kerry homes on July 26th, in what gardai say was a carefully prepared departure. They were working as waitresses in a Southport hotel when they were found.
In a statement Bryga's father, Mr Frank Lewis, a public relations consultant, said that both girls were safe and well. "That has always been our chief concern," he said. He asked that the families be given some "breathing space" to spend time on their own with their children.
Mr Lewis also thanked the Garda, the Scottish police, the Irish Consul-General in Edinburgh and the media, as well as clergy, neighbours and friends. "We will never be able to adequately thank all of those who have given us so much help," he said. "All the prayers and all the support has kept the girls safe and enabled both families to deal with the past month".
Gardai had video footage showing the girls taking a ferry from Larne in Co Antrim to Cairnryan in Scotland on the day they left home.
They had travelled under assumed names. There had been reported sightings of them in the Scottish towns of Dundee, St Andrews and Fife. Despite numerous appeals they had not contacted their families.
According to Det Sgt Dan Keane in Killarney, who headed the search, the Garda had given Southport CID information about the girls' whereabouts on Monday afternoon and they were found within an hour. "One of our many lines of inquiry bore fruit," he said.
The girls' trip had been planned well in advance, he said, and the teenagers even removed photographs of themselves from their houses before they left to hamper the search.
He said he was delighted that they had been found safely.
Mr Lewis said that the next few weeks would be particularly difficult for the girls and their families. "It is important that we all have time and space to overcome the trauma," he said.