Community schools pause to remember bus tragedy

This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of the Navan school bus crash in which five young girls lost their lives.
Monday 23rd May 2005 was one of the darkest days ever on the roads of Meath, when teenagers Clare McCluskey, Deirdre Scanlon, Aimee McCabe and Lisa Callan from St Michael’s Loreto and Sinéad Ledwidge from Beaufort College in Navan were killed and scores of other young people injured, some crticially, when the bus taking them home from local schools crashed and overturned on the Navan-Kentstown road. 
The wider communities of Navan, Beauparc, Kentstown and Rosnaree, where the students lived, were united in shock and grief after the five young lives were cut short in a tragic accident that numbed the country and made headlines around the world.
This weekend, local people - and particularly the school communities of St Michael’s and Beaufort College, as well the parishes of Kentstown and Donore - will remember the five young lives that were lost.
The school community of St Michael’s, along with the wider Loreto community, will join in a Remembrance Mass and an afternoon of shared memories this Friday, 22nd May.
The Remembrance Mass will be attended by the families of the five girls, the families of other students who shared their short lives, representatives from the wider Loreto community and Beaufort College, past pupils, the emergency services, principals of the Navan second-level schools in 2005 and today, and others who provided support to the schools at the time.
The principal of Loreto St Michael’s, Miriam Marsh, said that while preparing for the Remembrance Mass has rekindled the trauma and emotions of May 2005, the school hopes that the Service will help to provide a measure of comfort and solace to the families of the girls and to all who continue to be affected by the tragic events of 23rd May 2005.

Meanwhile, a Mass will also take place to remember all five girls in Yellow Furze Church on Saturday evening at 7pm.