THE ASHES OF a woman which were stolen from the home of an elderly Dublin couple have been anonymously left on the steps of a funeral home.

Anne O’Reilly told Joe Duffy on RTÉ’s Liveline how her 93-year-old father, who is practically deaf, let two men into the house in Raheny as he thought they were repair men.

Anne’s dad recently got his cardigan caught in his stairlift and was expecting a man to call to the house to fix it.

However, the man ushered her dad into the back room and said something about checking the water, while another person ran upstairs and went through their bedroom.

They took €300 in cash and they also took a small wooden box which contained the ashes of her mother’s niece Justine who died of a brain tumour when she was young.

O’Reilly said the loss of the ashes was particularly heartbreaking as Justine’s mother had passed away just three weeks ago. O’Reilly said:

I presume these people are just looking for anything valuable – money, jewellery and they would have presumed the box had jewellery in it. So no doubt when they open it and just found an envelope with ashes in it, they’ll fling it away and that just is devastating to us.

However before the end of the show, Duffy told listeners that the ashes were left on the steps of a funeral home and were intact.

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