Council workers had been preparing to salt the icy stretch of road in Rathcoole, Co Dublin where a minibus full of teenage schoolgirls narrowly escaped serious injury in a crash early yesterday morning.
The group of secondary school pupils were on their way from Clonmel to Dublin airport for a ten-day exchange trip to Parsburg in Germany. Four ambulances took the group to Tallaght Hospital where they were treated for shock and minor cuts and bruises. There were no serious injuries. Ms Margaret Burke, secretary of Loreto Secondary School in Clonmel said last night that the students had arrived back safely except for one girl who was being kept in hospital overnight for observation. Their parents had come to collect the girls from school and were "very, very relieved".
Mr Eamon Cunningham, senior administrative officer with the council, said that workers had been salting the outbound side of the Naas dual carriageway at around 5.30 a.m. yesterday, the time of the crash.
A vehicle transporter collided with the minibus carrying 15 schoolgirls and two teachers from the school. Four cars fell off the transporter, one landing on the minibus, flattening the roof. The group and their driver walked away from the wreckage shaken but physically unharmed.
"In another ten minutes we would have been on the inbound road salting the area where the crash took place," said Mr Cunningham, responding to a statement made by the bus driver, Mr Martin English, on RTE radio that the road should have been "gritted".
"There was nothing at all that could have been done. . . we were ten minutes too late," he said.
An internal investigation has been launched into the issue, he added.
Speaking to RTE yesterday one of the girls travelling on the bus Laura O'Keeffe (13) said the minibus was spinning around in circles, and a lorry crashed into the back window. There was glass everywhere, she said, and the bus stopped. She said she thought the ordeal was over and then a car from the vehicle transporter fell on the roof of the minibus.
She said everyone was screaming on the bus, describing the incident as "really, really terrifying", but added that everyone handled the situation well. "We all stuck together and we got through the whole thing," she said.