A senior Garda officer has described the scene of a crash in Co Louth on Saturday night that killed five young people as “difficult” for those who attended.
Supt Charlie Armstrong said gardaí who attended then had to inform the parents and other family members their loved ones had been killed.
Supt Armstrong, who is based in Dundalk, said some of the gardaí were just three months into their policing careers.
He said the families and friends of all five victims would, in time, seek answers to how the crash happened and why they had died and the Garda investigators working on the investigation would work hard to provide those answers.
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While everyone in the Garda was warned from the time they were training at the Garda College in Templemore, Co Tipperary, that they may be called upon to attend very difficult scenes, they all hoped it would never happen, he said.
“You see things you can’t unsee, the uniform is not a shield for that,” he said. “The members who attended the scene range in service from three months to 30 years. They finished duty at 7am on Sunday and they were back working again last night. They were given the option of being replaced by their colleagues but they wanted to come in, they wanted to work with their colleagues.”
The five were killed instantly on Saturday night in a head-on collision near Dundalk, with first responders arriving to what was described as a scene of “utter devastation”.
The friends were named as Chloe McGee (23) and Shay Duffy (21) from Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan; Alan McCluskey (23) from Drumconrath, Co Meath; Dylan Commins (23) from Ardee, Co Louth, and Chloe Hipson (21) from Lanarkshire, Scotland, who was living in Carrickmacross.
The Volkswagen Golf they were travelling to Dundalk in was in a collision with a Toyota Land Cruiser just after 9pm in the townland of Gibstown.
A sixth person travelling in the Volkswagen, a young man, survived and is being treated in hospital for serious injuries.
The occupants of the Toyota, a man and a woman, are also receiving hospital treatment.
Supt Armstrong said the Garda team that responded to the scene immediately had to focus on informing the families their loved ones had died, as well as practical tasks such as preserving the scene for examination.
“You’re meeting people for what is the worst day of their life, and you’re responsible for delivering the devastating news of the loss of their loved one. Particularly when you are breaking that news to a parent ... you’re going from the scene yourself, you’re trying to process what you’ve just seen yourself,” he said.
“But you’re also conscious you have to deliver information to that family member as professionally and compassionately as you possibly can. They’re scrambling for information. You mightn’t have that information at that particular time.”
Supt Armstrong said the emergency services personnel who attended the scene – including firefighters based at Dundalk, HSE ambulance crews and his own Garda personnel – encountered “a difficult scene”.
Conditions had been “wet and windy” around the time of the crash, which took place outside Ardee at about 9pm.
A senior officer has been appointed to lead the investigation at Dundalk Garda station into the cause of the tragedy. Postmortems will be carried out on the remains of the five victims over the coming days.
The vehicles involved in the crash will be examined for clues, though the Volkswagen the five deceased were in was badly damaged by fire, which broke out after the crash.
Chloe Hipson’s best friend has described her as having the “kindest soul”. Chantel Cullen said she would never forget their friendship, saying Ms Hipson would be “forever 21”.
“My girl, my beautiful bestie. Words can’t even explain how heartbroken I am. The most kindest soul with the most pure smile. I’ll forever cherish all the memories we both made together. Growing up with you will forever hold a special place in my heart. I love you so, so much,” she wrote on social media.
Another one of the victims, Chloe McGee, had just taken up a permanent teaching job at Ó Fiaich Institute of Further Education in Dundalk, where principal Padraig McGovern said he had spoken to her on Friday about how much she was looking forward to the weekend.
He described her as being “full of fun and she was full of achievement and success”, with her permanent job at the school – as a woodwork and construction teacher – recently confirmed, three years after she began working there.
“She loved her job. Chloe was three years with us and she had got her permanent contract and that was a big thing for Chloe,” Mr McGovern told RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland. “She became very much a part of the fabric of our school. She loved to help her students, loved to go the extra mile.
“She was very good at her subject. And was also the sort of girl that was involved in everything, all sorts of staff activities, any sort of new projects, anything that we were looking at to develop she was there and willing to take part.”
On Sunday, President Catherine Connolly said she was “deeply saddened and shocked by the loss of five precious young lives in Louth”.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the country is “numb and shocked” at the scale of the tragedy that saw the deaths of five young friends.
“I think the country is numb and shocked at the scale of the tragedy,” he said in Kerry on Monday, adding that the five young people had had “their lives ahead of them”.
He said there is “devastation” for their families, friends and communities and it is “very, very difficult to comprehend such a loss and at such scale in our community and we think of all those who are suffering and bereaved today”.
Speaking alongside other Opposition leaders during a press conference at Leinster House on Monday, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said: “I’m mindful as we’re standing here that five young lives were so traumatically and tragically lost and that families in Carrickmacross and Ardee, in Drumconrath, and the family of that young woman in Scotland, are grieving and I know we all very much feel it for them.”
Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik said she wanted to “join with others in expressing deepest condolences to the families and all those bereaved in that horrific crash at the weekend in Louth”.
Holly Cairns, the Social Democrats leader, said: “All of our thoughts are with the families and friends and communities of those young people who so tragically lost their life over the weekend.”
Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman also offered his sympathies to the families who lost loved ones. “It’s really hard to understand the degree of devastation that five communities, families, friends, communities, will face following such a tragic crash.”
The crash in Co Louth brought to 158 the total number of road fatalities for this year in the Republic, an increase of 10 on the same period last year.
