Volvo apologises for submitting wrong data

Dublin Bus has said it will recommence its own inquiry into the Wellington Quay crash following the verdict last night.

The company's internal inquiry was stopped at the request of the Director of Public Prosecutions to allow the court case to take place.

In a statement last night, Dublin Bus said: "The board of inquiry will now reconvene with a view to finalising their draft report which will then be presented to the Dublin Bus board."

Volvo has apologised "unreservedly" for submitting wrong data to the trial of Dublin Bus driver Kenneth Henvey.

During the 11-day trial, Volvo submitted technical evidence which related to a bus that the company operated in South Africa, rather than the bus involved in the Wellington Quay crash.

The error was described by Judge Michael White as a "serious matter".

The engineer involved, Marcus Fasth, of Volvo in Sweden, said he had been working on the two buses simultaneously and had mistakenly submitted the wrong report to the Garda.

In a statement last night, Volvo Bus Ltd said: "We apologise unreservedly for the errors in part of our evidence and acknowledge the decision of the court to admit our corrected material."

The company went on to point out that the vehicle involved in the crash had been "thoroughly investigated at the time by Volvo Bus, Dublin Bus and the gardaí and no fault was found".

The company also expressed its "heartfelt sympathy" to the relatives and friends of the victims in the case.

Patrick McGrath, prosecuting, told the jury in closing the case that the obvious explanation for the incident was that Mr Henvey put his foot on the accelerator of the bus rather than the brake. He said there was no scientific basis and no evidence to support the theory put forward by the defence that the bus had experienced a power surge.

Patrick Gageby SC, defending, said that to convict, the jury would have to go beyond reasonable doubt and find the incident was a result of pure driver error.

He said that to do this, the jury would have to accept the technical data which the prosecution said indicated there was no power surge.

During the trial it was revealed that technical information relied upon by the prosecution was inaccurate as the result of a mix-up by a Swedish Volvo engineer, and new data was presented to the jury.

Mr Gageby said that a power surge would have resulted from a "classic intermittent fault" which came and went without leaving a sign it had occurred.