"I noticed that the car ahead of me made no attempt to take the bend. It was like the bend wasn't there."rtRuadhán Mac Cormaic
George Desmond was on his way to Bunratty, where he planned to spend the night before collecting a group of American tourists from Shannon airport the next morning. This has been his job for nearly five years, shuttling American golfers around the southwest in his Mercedes minibus, and he knows the roads in these parts like he does his own hand.
Mr Desmond left Ennis and headed out on the Limerick road. Beyond Clarecastle a double white line divides the road, and he recalls there was a steady - if fairly slow - string of traffic coming towards him. In front of him the way was clear.
It was between 4.10pm and 4.15pm, but the August light gave him a good view of the road. "I was after negotiating the bend beyond Clarecastle Bridge and coming on to the straight patch of road when a black car came straight towards me on the wrong side of the road," said Mr Desmond. "I saw the car for a few split seconds and it seemed to be gaining speed as it came directly for me. The car also seemed to me as if it was out of control."
About the same time on that Saturday afternoon, Declan Costello was travelling from Limerick to Clarecastle, and at 4.10pm he was on the final stretch that sweeps left and downwards on the approach to the town. In front of him was a dark saloon car.
"I noticed that the car ahead of me made no attempt to take the bend. It was like the bend wasn't there. She just kept going straight."
On realising her mistake, Mr Costello saw the driver apparently trying to regain control by shoving her foot to the brake. "The car was well across the white centre line at this stage on the opposite side of the road. The car went left and right a few times and then it swerved and collided straight into the front of the minibus which was approaching from the Clarecastle direction."
In the minibus, Mr Desmond had no time to react. He tried to swing left, but the thump came in an instant. The black car slammed into the front of the minibus, its back lifting some 60 degrees into the air before crashing down again, bouncing back a few feet and coming to a stop.
Mr Desmond was badly shaken, his feet trapped under the crushed pedals, but eventually he managed to free himself through the emergency door to the back. A couple of passers-by ran towards him. Two or three times Mr Desmond repeated the same line to them: "She was coming down the wrong side of the road at me."
The driver of the black Hyundai Accent had fared much worse. After Maura Daffy was removed from the car and rushed to Ennis General Hospital , her mobile phone started ringing at the scene. Garda Gerard O'Leary picked up; it was Annette Daffy, a sister-in-law. Where was Maura, she asked? They were to meet in Clarecastle, and Maura hadn't arrived.
Maura Daffy, who was 54 and had been working in Dublin up to a week before the crash, was pronounced dead at 2.35am the following morning, August 14th, 2005. The autopsy on her body found fractures to both thighbones, her left shinbone, her right knee, several ribs and her jawbone, and concluded that she died of multiple injuries including a skull fracture. A toxicology test proved negative.
After conferring for no more than 10 seconds, the six-member jury returns a verdict of accidental death and, once Maura Daffy's family - having sat silently through the brief hearing - has left court no 3, the jury members file out and disperse from Ennis courthouse.
Three of the men linger inside the door, talking among themselves. All are retired and have been volunteering for inquest jury duty here for the past three years. Their attendance has something of a grim ritual about it; in a typical month they sit through at least one road death inquest, they say; this month there were two.
The coroner offers to excuse them in cases where the victim was a friend or acquaintance, but in a town this size, only degrees of familiarity separate them from most of the men and women whose final formalities they oversee.
Series will continue on occasional basis