'They were a lovely family. This is very shocking'

THE residents of a rural idyll near Bantry, County Cork, were last night struggling to come to terms with the horrific drowning yesterday of a mother in her thirties and her three-year-old daughter.

Orla O'Driscoll of Derryduv, Coomhola, Bantry, and daughter Muire died after their vehicle was swept into a river near their home.

The family had been returning from a children's party when tragedy struck on a ford at the entrance to their sheep farm at Derryduv, six miles from Bantry.

The concrete ford was submerged under three feet of flood water, which pushed the family's four-wheel drive silver pick-up into the raging torrent as Mrs O'Driscoll attempted to drive across.

Mrs O'Driscoll managed to get her son out. She then tried to pass her daughter to him, but the vehicle was carried too fast downstream.

The boy then ran one mile down the boreen where he was picked up by a passing motorist who returned to the scene but could find no trace of the vehicle. It was at that point that the alarm was raised at Teddy O'Brien's shop in Coomhola, on the Bantry to Kilgarvan road, and a major search got underway involving West Cork Civil Defence and fire brigade personnel; the Bantry Inshore Search and Rescue Association, gardaí and locals.

At 4.40pm, subsiding flood waters uncovered the crushed wreck of the pick-up, wedged downstream in the gorge. Rescue workers managed to prise it open but no one was found inside. The body of Mrs O'Driscoll was later found at 6.45pm in the main Coomhola River and two miles from where her pick-up had entered the water. Her daughter's body was found sometime later snagged in debris in the tributary 100 yards from where the accident occurred. She was rushed to Bantry hospital, where all attempts to resuscitate her failed.

A Bantry Inshore Search and Rescue Association spokesman said: "the rain was coming down off the hills and the river came out on to the road in a number of places."

A coastguard helicopter flew from Shannon to assist, but later returned because of the poor conditions.

School bus driver Noreen Mullins said the boy had not travelled with her from the Bantry Gaelscoil yesterday as he was collected by his mother so he could go to a friend's birthday party. "They were a lovely family, this is very shocking," she said.

Local farmer Neilie O'Leary said the level of water in the river could increase dramatically after periods of heavy rainfall. Fine Gael councillor John O'Shea called on the environment minister to make emergency funding available for the construction of flood-proof fords. The dead woman's husband Finbarr was last night being treated for trauma.