THE FAMILY of Irishman Paul Nolan Miralles, who recovered most of his dismembered remains themselves from an Amsterdam canal last week, have said no family should have had to endure the trauma they suffered.

The 36-year-old from Clonsilla in Dublin had lived in the Dutch capital for 10 years.

A photographer and waiter at the Hard Rock Cafe, he drowned in a canal after a night out in Amsterdam on April 13th.

A police search failed to locate his body despite several sightings of a man answering his description floating in the water, near to where he had last been seen on the Singel canal.

There were separate reported sightings by his mother, who came from Dublin to help search, and also his workmates, in the days that followed his disappearance.

The Dutch police search, however, was officially called off last Wednesday even though a shoulder had already been found in the water, which DNA tests have since established to be part of Mr Nolan Miralles’s remains.

The shredded remains of his jacket and shoulder bag had also been discovered in the propeller of a canal pleasure launch.

His body appears to have been sucked under the water and caught in the propeller of the glass-topped canal launch filled with tourists shortly after being spotted for the last time.

Throughout last Thursday his family recovered eight further body parts using a boat driven by a client of the dead man and sonar equipment operated by his cousin, a marine biologist.

The family say that when help was finally offered by the Dutch authorities late on Thursday night it was in the form of two “very supportive” family liaison officers. This followed repeated requests by the family and through diplomatic channels.

By then, according to Mr Nolan Miralles’s sister, Anne Ravanona, family members were “completely traumatised, devastated and living a nightmare for five days of the search”.

“It has been horrific, a nightmare, so harrowing, and no family should have gone through this ordeal, left alone to suffer the trauma of pulling bits of my brother’s body out of a canal”, said Ms Ravanona, a Paris-based global management training expert.

On Good Friday the district police precinct dispatched four divers into the canal. The police had earlier asked the family if police could also use the boat and sonar equipment that the family had arranged.

When the dead man’s family thought that “things could not get any worse” a large portion of his lower body was found by the family floating in the water, Ms Ravanona said.

“My husband and my brother and cousin had to hold on to it for an hour awaiting the police boat dispatched to pick it up. Paul’s girlfriend was there also; that was beyond human endurance.”

She said these remains were moved from the canal side by the coroner and treated with care and respect before being taken to the morgue. On Thursday the family had had to contact police each time they recovered body parts, which were taken away in a bucket and a box.

It could take days or even weeks before the remains of Mr Nolan Miralles can be released and returned to Ireland for burial. Flowers and messages of sympathy have been laid at the cordoned-off access to the canal at the spot where he may have fallen in.