Huge personal loss and tragedy befell Irish women Elber Twomey, Roseann Brennan, and Una Butler — and each has turned unimaginable horror and heartache into heroic virtue as they launch individual campaigns for safer roads and suicide prevention.

A coroner has praised a woman, whose entire family was wiped out in a car crash in England caused by a suicidal driver, for her courage and dignity in the face of unspeakable tragedy, and for her selfless campaign to raise awareness of suicide risk assessment.

It is virtually impossible for those of us whose lives have followed a relatively smooth path to imagine the despair suffered by a woman who lost her entire family in a car crash caused by a suicidal taxi-driver in England.

Two joint Oireachtas committees have backed a young widow’s campaign to secure special training for gardaí to deal with suicide.

It was a tragedy of unimaginable proportions which touched people on both sides of the Irish Sea.