A woman seriously injured in a wrong-way motorway crash three years ago has said the M9 collision last weekend has "brought it all back" for her.
Five teenagers died on Sunday when the car they were travelling in was driven the wrong way down the M9 in Co Kildare and hit another vehicle.
A child and three women from the same family, who were in the other car, are being treated for serious injuries in hospital.
Funerals were held for three of the five teenagers killed - Joe Carthy, Alex McCarthy and Kamil Pustkowski - yesterday, while the funerals for Jeremy O'Brien and Jack Kennedy will be held on Monday and Tuesday.
Róisín Stakelum's life was changed by a similar collision three years ago and said she "absolutely cannot believe that it has happened again".
Speaking on RTÉ's Brendan O'Connor programme, she said: "I’m so upset. It’s really, really affected me. I can’t stop thinking about the girls and the little boy in the car that was crashed into, and what they must be going through, and it’s brought it all back for me.
"I haven’t been able to sleep properly since I heard about this, to be honest, and I just can’t believe it’s happened again, and that I don’t feel like there was anything really done to try to prevent something like this from happening again."
Ms Stakelum was also driving to the airport on 1 July 2023 for a holiday before a planned emigration to Australia.
Shortly before 1am on the M8 motorway, she was struck by a car driven the wrong way down the motorway and said she "had no time to react".
Johnny Foley, who was 16, and from Spur Hill in Togher in Cork, died in the crash. Two other teenage boys were seriously injured, while a teenage girl was less seriously injured in the incident.
In 2024, the driver of the stolen car received four years detention after he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing the death of Johnny Foley.
He also pleaded guilty to three charges of dangerous driving causing serious harm to two teenage passengers in his car as well to Ms Stakelum, in the two-car collision, and to a count of endangerment, where other motorists had to take evasive action.
Recalling the crash, Ms Stakelum said: "I was probably drifting in and out of consciousness, but I remember the headlights, I remember the big bang, and I remember being in the car, absolutely terrified afterwards.
"I had had a fairly significant head injury, so everything - like nothing, made sense. I could not comprehend what had happened.
"I didn’t know where I was. I had forgotten where I was going. It was just absolutely terrifying."
She said that a "psychological toll" involving fear in the world kicked in when she was leaving the safety of the hospital.
"That fear has lived in me since - it hasn’t really gone away. It has improved somewhat, but I am still absolutely terrified of everything."
Ms Stakelum has since been able to return to work two days per week but said "it’s a struggle", adding: "I still have a lot of physical consequences and psychological consequences that affect my ability to work, and it has affected my trajectory in work."
Asked if she thought she would ever go back to her old life, she said: "No, I don’t. I think my life is always going to be different.
"I’m always going to live with the scars, physical and psychological, from what happened to me that night. I’ll never be the same again."
She said she is a completely different person following the crash as she urged everyone to be more careful on the roads, "especially the small cohort of young people" that are are driving dangerously on motorways, adding: "It has to stop - it’s absolutely ridiculous.
"People that survive crashes like that, they don’t necessarily get their own lives back."
She said she was "angry" that "nothing has been put in place to stop this from happening" again, adding that other European countries have alert systems for wrong-way drivers on motorways.
Asked how she feels about the driver who crashed into her, Ms Stakelum said: "Mixed emotions. I have a lot of empathy for him. I have an awful lot of anger as well."
She said he did not have an easy life but added it was "not an excuse".
Further asked to reflect on the boys involved on Sunday’s crash, she told the programme: "I don’t know, that’s a harder one to answer.
"I do have empathy for them and I have a lot of empathy for their families and what they’ve been going through."
On the family injured in the crash, she added: "I don’t know what they have ahead of them and trauma can affect people in so many different ways.
"I don’t know what kind of injuries they have.
"All I could say is that it’s going to be … a slow process to get back to normal – and if there’s anything that I can do to help them, I would really like to be able to do that if they were willing to accept my help."
A fundraiser for the family injured in the M9 crash had raised more than €700,000.
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Facts Only
* A woman was seriously injured in a wrong-way motorway crash three years ago.
* Five teenagers died when their car was driven the wrong way down the M9 in Co Kildare and hit another vehicle on Sunday.
* A child and three women from the same family were in the other car and are being treated for serious injuries in hospital.
* Funerals were held for three of the five teenagers killed: Joe Carthy, Alex McCarthy, and Kamil Pustkowski.
* Funerals for Jeremy O'Brien and Jack Kennedy will be held on Monday and Tuesday.
* The woman stated she cannot believe the event has happened again.
* The woman was driving to the airport on July 1, 2023.
* She was struck by a car driven the wrong way down the M8 motorway shortly before 1 am.
* Johnny Foley (16) died in the crash.
* Two other teenage boys were seriously injured, and one teenage girl was less seriously injured.
* In 2024, the driver of the stolen car received four years detention for dangerous driving causing the death of Johnny Foley.
* The driver also pleaded guilty to charges involving dangerous driving causing serious harm to two teenage passengers and endangerment in the collision.
Executive Summary
Full Take
The narrative centers on a repeated traumatic event, shifting the focus from the immediate tragedy to the enduring psychological and societal cost of repeated risk exposure. The account of Róisín Stakelum illustrates how trauma is not resolved by time; instead, re-exposure functions as a catalyst, resurrecting unresolved fear and anger regarding systemic failures in road safety. The contrast between the survivors' experience—which involves lingering physical and psychological consequences affecting their ability to function—and the perpetrators' legal outcomes highlights a disconnect between individual accountability and societal preventative structures.
The pattern observed is the relationship between acute physical violence and prolonged psychological aftermath. The driver who caused the initial harm faced criminal penalties, yet Stakelum’s emotional experience suggests that punitive measures do not negate the pervasive sense of vulnerability or the feeling that a safety net was absent, fueling an enduring sense of injustice and fear. This creates a tension: while legal systems process individual actions, the narrative demonstrates the difficulty in processing collective trauma and establishing true safety as a baseline. The implication is that prevention requires more than just punishing the act; it demands acknowledging and mitigating the lasting psychological imprint on victims and their families, and addressing why these events are allowed to recur within the infrastructure of public space.
Bridge questions: What mechanisms exist for integrating the long-term psychological toll experienced by survivors into legal and public safety frameworks? How does the cyclical nature of such accidents impact community trust in regulatory bodies designed to prevent them? What responsibility exists beyond punitive measures in creating environments where such repeated catastrophic outcomes are deemed unacceptable?
Sentinel — Human
This text appears to be a deeply personal feature piece based on survivor testimony, supported by factual event details, suggesting a human editorial origin.