'Challenging road ahead': GoFundMe launched for sisters and child injured in M9 crash 

A GoFundMe page has been launched to help support three sisters Alma and Niamh Kinsella and Ella Hendricken who were injured in the recent M9 crash along with a little boy. Picture: GoFundMe 

A fundraiser has been launched to support the three women and a child who were critically and seriously injured in Sunday's M9 crash in Kildare.

The siblings, named as Alma and Niamh Kinsella and Ella Hendricken, from Carlow, and a seven-year-old boy, were travelling to Dublin Airport to attend a family wedding in the UK when a BMW, travelling at high speed in the wrong direction down the motorway, struck their vehicle.

The incident resulted in the death of five teenagers in the BMW, who were aged between 15 and 18 years old.

It is understood that Alma and Niamh were sitting in the front of the car at the time of the incident, while their younger sister, Ella and the little boy were in the back.

Although two of the sisters hospitalised after their car was hit were initially in a critical condition, their condition is understood to have stabilised, although they remain in serious condition in hospital.

All remain in hospital undergoing treatment for serious injuries. The little boy is believed to have suffered leg injuries.

Since the incident, a friend of Ella, Bryan Curley, has set up a GoFundMe page, with a target of €350,000 to support the family.

“I’m setting up this fundraiser for my best friend Ella and her sisters, Niamh and Alma, who were recently involved in a serious road traffic accident,” said Mr Curley.

“This has been an incredibly difficult and frightening time for Ella, Niamh, Alma and their family.

“They are facing a long and challenging road ahead, and right now, I ask that you keep them all in your thoughts and prayers.

“All funds are going directly to the family.” 

More than €350,000 has been raised via the GoFundMe page, with donations pouring in from members of the public across the country.

It comes as gardaí are expected to carry out “focused intelligence operations” to identify and target mainly juvenile gangs driving on the wrong side of the road.

Concerns are also being expressed at senior level at the lack of space in the country’s sole detention centre for children — Oberstown in north Dublin.

Garda sources have said that members of a notorious network of teenage criminals, the so-called Lucky Dip gang, continued to carry out crimes, including joyriding, because the detention centre was full and could not take the offenders.