Anthony Holland, 21, and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Siobhan McConnon, were setting off on holiday to Kerry early on Friday morning when their car ploughed into a lorry near Mullingar.
The couple will be buried together after 11am funeral Mass at St Joseph’s church, in Carrickmacross. Holland, a filling-station attendant and a member of Carrickmacross Fire Brigade, had only last week celebrated his 21st birthday. McConnon, was a fifth-year student at St Louis secondary school in the town.
The McConnon and Holland families agreed that the couple, who were described as inseparable, would be interred together in St Joseph’s cemetery just outside Carrickmacross. Colleagues of Holland’s from Carrickmacross fire station will provide a guard of honour at his funeral.
Peter Gollogly, station officer at Carrickmacross Fire Brigade, said yesterday: “Anthony was a chap who lived for the brigade. He had all the qualities needed to be a fireman and he had himself already been at the scene of many horrific accidents in the locality.”
The crash happened outside Belvedere House hotel on the N52 outside Mullingar. It is believed the couple’s car, an Opel Corsa, was swerving to avoid a vehicle turning into the hotel and ended up on the wrong side of the road in the path of the lorry.
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Yesterday, a man in his twenties was killed in a road accident in Co Monaghan, bringing to 249 the death toll on Ireland’s roads this year, up by 20 on 2003. The man’s car left the road at Cabra Cross near Castleblayney early yesterday. A male passenger, also in his twenties, was injured.