Three crash victims will be laid to rest tomorrow
THE three Donegal victims of the horrific road tragedy at Ardee, Co. Louth, will be laid to rest tomorrow.
Services for Margaret McGonigle, 69, and her 37-year-old daughter Mairéad Mundy will be held at 11am in the Church of St Joseph and St Conal in Bruckless, Co. Donegal, at 11am. At 2.30pm, the funeral Mass will start in the same church for the third victim, mother-of-four Racheal Cassidy Battles. All will be buried in the adjoining cemetery.
The three women died when returning home in two separate cars from Dublin Airport following a dream holiday in Turkey.
Mairéad and husband Padraic were celebrating the first anniversary of their wedding with their neighbours and friends. Mourners attended the wakes of the victims in two homes beside each other on a tiny housing estate in Ballyloughan, Bruckless, last evening.
The mourners included Racheal’s four children and Mairéad’s only child, 13-year-old Caoimhín O’Neill, whose dad, her first partner, died eight years ago.
Close family friends are helping Caoimhín deal with three heartbreaking losses – first his father in 2009 and on Friday his mother and grandmother. Mrs McGonigle and her daughter were being waked in the one house where Caoimhín and his step-dad Padraic live. Racheal was being waked in her own home by her husband Martin, her children and friends.