I had no words I could say to Chloe's parents ..what words can there be for such grief?

A PRIEST became emotional yesterday morning as he spoke about the moment he hugged the parents of one of the five young people killed in the Dundalk road crash.

- BY MICHAEL O'TOOLE

"I embraced them, I said I have no words," Monsignor Shane McCaughey said of his meeting with the parents of Chloe McGee, 23, who died in Saturday's disaster.

Mgr McCaughey, who is the parish priest of Carrickmacross in Co Monaghan - where Chloe, a teacher in Dundalk, was born and bred - said that all he could do was embrace parents Eileen and Kieran when he visited them on Sunday.

Speaking at St Joseph's Church in the town yesterday, he told us: "I embraced them, I said I have no words. I don't have words to overcome the grief that they are experiencing. I don't have those words.

"I have compassion, certainly. I have presence to show that we are supporting them in any way that we can.

HOPES

"But what words do you say to a person, a mother who has a 23-year-old daughter whom she had such dreams and hopes and visions for the future for - and all just snuffed out in a flash?

"There is nobody who has words for that and I most certainly wouldn't presume to have words for that situation. All that we can do is be present with them, be with them."

Chloe, 23, Shay Duffy, 21, Alan McCluskey, 23, Dylan Commins, 23, and Chloe Hipson, 21, tragically lost their lives on Saturday evening when the Volkswagen Golf they were travelling in collided with a Toyota Land Cruiser on the L3168.

A sixth individual, a male, who was also in the Golf at the time of the collision, survived with serious but non-life-threatening injuries and is currently being treated in hospital.

The two occupants of the Land Cruiser were also hospitalised following the crash, but neither suffered life-threatening injuries.