The driver of the bus involved in the crash in which a man and a woman died yesterday said a car travelling in the opposite direction came straight at him and collided with his vehicle, causing him to lose control of it, according to the company which owns the bus.
Mr Jim Burke, managing director and owner of Citylink, said their driver had told him the oncoming car hit the side of the vehicle, which then collided with another oncoming car before ploughing through a concrete fence and down a sharp embankment into a field where it landed upright.
The drivers of both cars in the collision were pronounced dead at the scene of the accident which emergency service crews last night described as one of the worst they had seen. It happened on a straight and wide stretch of road which was considered safe.
Mr Burke said he spoke to the bus-driver, Mr Peter Fitzpatrick (40), briefly after the accident which occurred at about 3.55 p.m. at Leinster Bridge on the main Dublin-Galway road.
"He was in deep shock but he said a car came straight at him and went under the front of the bus and he lost control of the steering," he said at the scene of the accident. "I can't figure out why the bus didn't overturn. It must have been by the grace of God."
Mr Alan Keague, station officer with Trim fire brigade, said the two deceased had to be cut from the wreckage of their badly damaged cars. He said most of the bus's 35 passengers had been able to walk off the vehicle and were sitting on the grass in the field, suffering mostly from fractures, facial bruising and shock, when emergency crews arrived about 20 minutes after the accident.
Ms Catriona Geoghegan, the bus courier who was sitting in a jump seat at the front of the vehicle, was one of the two people who had to be cut out of the bus. Another trapped male passenger was taken out through the rear emergency exit. The driver, who has worked with the Galway-based Citylink company for five years, suffered shock and minor injuries.
The wreckage of the bus lay last night in the field owned by a local sheep farmer where it landed after the crash. Its front windscreen had been dislodged and the front part of its undercarriage was completely sheared away. The accident happened while the bus was travelling along the N4 from Dublin Airport to Galway city. The accident took place a short distance from Mother Hubbard's restaurant, between Enfield and Kinnegad, on the Co Kildare side of Leinster bridge which crosses the Boyne river between Co Kildare and Co Meath.
Supt Michael Meally from Trim Garda station said at the scene that a major emergency plan was implemented to cope with the scale of the incident. Traffic was diverted or disrupted for several hours while the bus passengers were shuttled to hospitals and the wreckage of the two cars involved in the crash was removed for examination.
Supt Meally appealed for witnesses to contact Trim Garda station.
Blanchardstown Hospital has two emergency numbers for people seeking information on those who were injured: 01- 8213844 and 01-8213478