Recording raises key questions in Kyran Durnin investigation

An audio recording which raises key questions in the investigation into the suspected murder of Kyran Durnin is being broadcast for the first time by BBC Spotlight.

Kyran was reported missing at the end of August but in October An Garda Síochána (Irish police) announced the boy was presumed dead.

Gardaí said he had not been seen for two years – despite being known to child services.

The recording contains an interview with the boy’s grandmother and was made in the period between the missing person’s appeal and the murder investigation.

The recording was made during an interview with a journalist in which Rhonda Tyson appealed to Kyran’s mother Dayla, who was also missing at the time, to make contact with her.

Dayla was found alive in Great Britain without Kyran.

Some of the information provided by Ms Tyson in the interview contradicts Garda statements surrounding the last time Kyran was seen.

Gardaí are now in possession of the tape as part of the investigation.

Drogheda Life journalist Andrew Spearman said he had a “nodding acquaintanceship” with Ms Tyson prior to their interview.

When Gardaí launched a murder investigation weeks after the recording was made, Mr Spearman said he was “gobsmacked”.

“I was shocked to the core. How could that be?

“I don’t often stay awake at night thinking about things, but I did with this because, you know, either she was lying through her teeth to me, or the guards are wrong.”

Spotlight approached Ms Tyson for a comment but she declined to respond.

Kyran was a pupil at the national [primary] school near his home in Dundalk in 2022, then aged six.

It’s understood authorities were told he would be moving to Northern Ireland and attending a new school in Newry.

Spotlight has discovered a key witness who undermines the claim that Kyran had been living in Newry at the time he is believed to have disappeared.

School officials in Dundalk, where Kyran lived with his mother, were reportedly told at the end of the 2022 summer term that he would be attending school over the border – but that claim was not confirmed.

Stormont Education Minister Paul Givan has told the BBC that officials from his department will be meeting their Dublin counterparts in the coming weeks to discuss how information “is shared as effectively and efficiently as possible”.

“The case of Kyran Durnin is deeply upsetting and as a parent I am horrified to think that a child can disappear and that it could go unnoticed,” Mr Givan said.

“Kyran’s case is subject to An Garda Síochána investigation and we need to understand what went wrong in this situation.”

An internal review of Tusla’s interactions with Kyran’s family has been carried out, but has not been made public, in consultation with gardaí.

Tusla told Spotlight that although Kyran was not in its care, significant efforts were made by staff to provide further support to the family in 2021/22.

It also said no referral was received from Kyran’s school in relation to concerns about his welfare or attendance.

The Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris, previously said he had never seen a case like this in his 40-year career in policing on both sides of the border.

Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, is calling for a full public inquiry to establish how Kyran went missing for two years without anyone noticing.

“The case is utterly horrifying. This is a child who’s completely vanished off the face of the planet,” she told Spotlight.

Ms Gallagher said this case should be a “watershed moment” for child protection in Ireland.

“[It] seems to me there has got to be a robust independent inquiry, a public inquiry, which looks at the broader non-criminal issues and looks at how on earth this can have happened, and fundamentally looks at what needs to change in Ireland’s child protection systems to ensure that this never happens again.”

She added: “It seems to me that although we don’t yet know the detail, we do know that this was a child who was fundamentally very badly failed, and it seems likely was failed by multiple agencies and potentially by multiple individuals.”