Road safety in spotlight after six deaths

The Government is being urged to draw up a separate road safety strategy for Co Donegal after crashes in the county claimed six young lives this weekend.

Three men and two women in their early 20s were killed in a head-on collision near Quigley’s Point, Muff early yesterday.

A male passenger in his 20’s died about five miles away at 3.30am today when the car in which he was travelling went into a ditch on the Burnfoot Road.

Mayor of Buncrana Cllr Padraig MacLochlainn claimed that 17 young people have now died on the roads of the surrounding Inishowen Peninsula in the last 18 months.

“This can’t go on. It’s devastating the local community,” he said.

Three teenagers were also killed in Buncrana in July 2004 when their car struck a bridge and plunged into a field.

The Sinn Féin politician called for government agencies to draw up a separate road safety strategy for the area.

“There must be reasons why the death toll is so high in Co Donegal compared to the rest of the country and it must be sorted out,” he said.

In the two other deaths this weekend, a motorcyclist died in a collision with a car at a junction in Swords Co Dublin yesterday afternoon and 20-year-old Samantha Butler of Carrick-on-Suir died in a two-vehicle smash on the Waterford Road in Clonmel on at 10pm on Friday night.

The Co Donegal deaths comprised two young couples and a cousin, all from Buncrana and Quigley's Point.

The funerals of Gavin Duffy, 21; his cousin Darren Quinn, 21; Rochelle Peoples, 22 and her boyfriend David Steele, 23, will take place tomorrow.

Gavin’s girlfriend Charlene O’ Connor, 21 will be buried on Tuesday.

Prayers are due to be said at all Sunday Masses in the area today.