A number of people have died after a collision involving a car driving on the wrong side of the M9 motorway in Co Kildare.<\/p>\n
The two-car crash happened at Moone on the M9 Northbound at Junction 3 at around 3am this morning.<\/p>\n
A vehicle was travelling southbound on the northbound carriageway of the M9 when it hit a second car.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed said a number of fatalities have been confirmed, but that it could not provide further details at this time.<\/p>\n
At least four others have been seriously injured, two in a critical condition.<\/p>\n
The female driver and front passenger of the second car, both in their 30s, are in a critical condition in Tallaght University Hospital.<\/p>\n
A female back seat passenger, in her 20s, was taken to St Luke’s Hospital after she sustained serious injuries.<\/p>\n
A child, who was also a passenger in the second car, has been taken to Children’s Health Ireland in Crumlin and is in a serious condition.<\/p>\n
Fiosr\u00fa, the Office of the Police Ombudsman, has been notified of the head-on collision.<\/p>\n
Its on-call team of investigators attended the scene and an independent investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n
The watchdog said a Fiosr\u00fa investigation relates to incidents involving contact with garda\u00ed where a member of the public has died or been seriously injured.<\/p>\n
It said a referral does not necessarily mean a garda or garda\u00ed have been accused of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
“Instead, it means that Fiosr\u00fa should independently investigate the incident to ascertain whether or not the act or omission of a garda or garda\u00ed may have resulted in the death of, or serious harm to, a person,” it added.<\/p>\n
The section of the M9 from Junction 3 to Junction 4 northbound and southbound remains closed for a forensic examination with local diversions in place.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed have appealed for anyone who was travelling on the M9 northbound or southbound between 2am and 3am to come forward.<\/p>\n
They are particularly interested in hearing from anyone who may have dashcam footage of the incident.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information is asked to contact Athy Garda Station on 01 666 6000, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111, or any garda station.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A number of people have died after a collision involving a car driving on the wrong side of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-594915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}