The injured: Two students were recovering from surgery at the Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore last night and four other people were being kept under observation following the school bus crash in Co Offaly in which 15-year-old Michael White was killed.
Thirty-three students and the bus driver were taken to hospitals in Tullamore and Mullingar after the bus overturned on a straight stretch of the Clara to Rahan road just before 8.30am. No other vehicle was involved.
The bus was bringing pupils to Killina Presentation Secondary School, near Rahan, Co Offaly.
Six people, including the driver Gerard Buckley, were kept overnight in Tullamore hospital. It was hoped that at least four of them would be released today.
Hospital manager Peter Waters said 20 patients had been brought to the hospital yesterday. A further 14 less seriously injured patients were brought to the Midland Regional Hospital in Mullingar. By yesterday afternoon, all students had been released from the Mullingar hospital.
Mr Waters said many off-duty hospital and emergency staff answered calls for help and some night duty staff remained to help deal with the emergency.
A mobile phone call notified the ambulance service of the crash near Clara yesterday. Ten ambulances attended the scene, some arriving within minutes of the incident. The Tullamore hospital emergency plan was activated and Dr Seán O'Rourke, emergency medicine consultant, led a medical team to the scene.
Dr O'Rourke said a lot of assessment and treatment had already been done by the ambulance service when he arrived. "It was a confused and difficult scenario because many of the children had contacted their parents who actually attended the scene as well."
The geography of the area was difficult as there was just one narrow road surrounded by bog "which made it very difficult for access, and to leave", he said. About 20 emergency vehicles were at the scene as well as parents and passers-by. The area was later sealed off and the bog road remained closed all day.
The precise number of passengers on the bus remained unclear last night. A Garda spokesman said he did not know, while Dr O'Rourke said the medical services had contact with 34 students and the bus driver. He said he did not know if some students had left the scene having had no contact with medical staff. If this was the case, Dr O'Rourke said it was "very important that any student who was involved in such a serious accident who has not had a medical assessment should be assessed, either by their local GP or to attend their local A&E department".
When he spoke to the media at 3pm yesterday, one student had undergone surgery and another was in theatre "for relatively minor injuries, basically injuries sustained by glass lacerations", he said. One teenage boy with a broken nose and another with a bandaged head left the Tullamore hospital flanked by relatives just before lunchtime yesterday.
Three distressed male students from Coláiste Choilm in Tullamore called to see if their friends were all right but they were told that only family members were allowed to visit patients.