Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I share in the condolences offered by the Taoiseach by extending my sincere sympathy and the sympathies of the Fine Gael Party to the parents of the school girls who lost their lives so tragically yesterday in County Meath. We think today of Sinéad Ledwidge, Aimee McCabe, Deirdre Scanlon, Claire McCluskey and Lisa Callan, greatly loved and sadly missed.

Many of us were in Meath recently for the by-election. It is fair to say that the royal county and its fine people will be devastated for years to come by the tragedy that struck out of blue yesterday right at the end of the school year.

I speak for the party in sending our prayers and thoughts to the families who are today keeping vigil at the bedside of their children who survived. It will be extraordinarily difficult for all those who were involved or injured yesterday to reconcile themselves with what happened to their school friends. Today I wish them every healing and full recovery in body, mind and spirit.

To lose a child must be the most unbearable loss in any parent's life. I am sure last night after the news broke there was not a house in Ireland where parents did not look at their own children and think "What if, and thank God it wasn't". For that reason alone, the heart of every parent here and every parent in the country goes out today to those parents in County Meath.

Again, I offer heartfelt sympathy to all the families and I pray for comfort and healing for the hearts and lives that are broken today in Meath and beyond.

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