'It's like something out of a film'

Eyewitness accounts: Hundreds of children and their parents had emerged from a Confirmation at the church in Bluebell just 30 minutes before the stolen bus crashed into a number of cars.

"It was the hand of God that more people weren't killed," said Sadie Delaney who was visiting her friend, Kay Murray, in Bluebell.

"We came out of Mass at 12.30pm after the Confirmation. The church was packed with families; young children everywhere."

The Mass-goers had all left when the bus collided with the cars at about 1.05pm. "There was a little horse and carriage taking one of the girls after making her Confirmation and four or six others to Drimnagh," Ms Delaney said. "If they had been out there on the road when the bus came they were gone."

The bus went through red lights and crossed to the wrong side of the road at one point before it crashed at Rathcoole at 1.30 pm.

The Bluebell section of the Naas Road remained closed off yesterday evening. Just after 7pm three recovery vehicles arrived to move the cars. Gardaí in white jumpsuits were still photographing the scene. Some of the cars had mounted the footpath while others were abandoned in the middle of the road. The woman who died was a passenger, travelling with her daughter in a Nissan Micra. The passenger door was open on the blue-green car which was left facing towards Inchicore.

"It's like something out of a film, isn't it?" said Robert Deans from Drimnagh as he surveyed the scene with his wife Teresa. They were leaving Mass in another parish when several patrol cars sped by. "I believe the bus passed by our house," Ms Deans said. "My daughter was at the traffic lights outside our door and it flew by. She said the bus was smashed."

One woman who lives across the road from the accident scene arrived home just after the bus had hit the cars. She asked not to be named out of respect for the dead woman's family. "It just seemed crazy. The place looked like something you'd see on television."

Her neighbour Giles Hobson was returning from a church service when gardaí told him that he could not get through. Two Romanian brothers who share the house with him were asleep when the commotion woke them.

"One of the boys saw them take the lady out of car but that's about all we know."