The sister of an Irish woman who went missing in Portugal three years ago has expressed hope that her sister will be found safe and well.
Jean Tighe from Cavan was 38 years of age when she vanished after she left a hostel in Parada, a town 30 minutes outside of Lisbon.
Since then, her family have been liaising with Portuguese authorities about the investigation into Jean's disappearance, however, they say it has not been straightforward.
This week, she was finally added to the Interpol missing persons database.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Leona Tighe said people who have relocated missing loved ones after years of searching have contacted her family through a Facebook page they set up to find her sister, to offer hope.
Just over 1,000 days ago, Ms Tighe disappeared on what the family believes was the afternoon of Monday 13 July.
She was last seen leaving the Help Yourself Hostel in Parada by a hostel worker. Her family have not seen or heard from her since.
It is understood that the 38-year-old had her handbag with her, but that has not been located.
Leona Tighe explained how the family misses their daughter and sister "dreadfully".
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"We just want to know what happened or where she is. We don't believe that people just disappear," she said.
Leona Tighe lives in New York but has travelled to Portugal on multiple occasions to help with the investigation which has forced the family to knock on "a huge amount of doors".
In the meantime, time is ticking to find her sister.
According to Leona Tighe, the investigation has been progressing "very, very slowly".
"On Monday evening Jean was put up on the Portuguese police administration Missing Persons Database, which is very important. But it just goes to show you how long it took. That took a huge amount of effort and work."
The family is still in the dark regarding Ms Tighe's last movements.
They believe the obvious place to look would be her banking and social media activity, but they have received no information in that regard and Leona says there are not enough updates coming from the Portuguese police.
Authorities in Ireland have been asked to help.
"We have to constantly get on to the Department of Foreign Affairs and to the lawyers in Portugal to get movement and action from the Portuguese police. And we can't understand why that's so hard because Jean disappeared and a criminal investigation was opened.
"I can't understand for the life of us (sic) how this is so slow, why we're not getting any information about what has happened in the investigation so far, or where they are with Jean's investigation and what needs to be done."
The family also received an update from the Minister for Justice that the gardaí and the Portuguese police would conduct a video conference to exchange information and discuss how to progress the investigation, however, this has not yet happened.
There is some renewed hope now that Jean Tighe has been added to the missing persons database.
"We've lost three years and we really need to share this information on the database. There are a lot of charitable organisations and NGOs who cover streets all over the world. When charitable workers come across somebody in distress the first thing they do is look up police administrated databases to see if the person is genuinely officially missing. Unfortunately, we never had that up until a couple of days ago."
Leona says she owes it to her sister to find her.
"Jean is not a person to give up and is a great worker too. So I know that my sister would want me to keep going."
