"I heard about it from her sister, " remembered her husband Gary, who captained the Mayo football team in the 2004 All Ireland final.

"The accident happened at about half nine, and I got a phonecall at 11 o'clock. I didn't know at the time what was going to happen. We went to Sligo Hospital and it was still serious then. She didn't die for 12 hours." The driver of the lorry escaped uninjured.

That morning, Trish had dropped in the final plans to an engineer for a house for which she and her husband had applied for planning permission.

Along with their baby daughter, Emma, they were to move from rented accommodation to the house where they planned to spend the rest of their lives together.

"I'm still in shock to be honest, " said Gary. "You don't really realise what's going on throughout the funeral. It's only now that it's getting quiet that I'm starting to think about it, but it's only day to day. . . We've got a young daughter, 15 months old, Emma, so I have to keep it going for her sake. She doesn't realise what's going on at all."

Gary and Emma are still living in the house they were renting before Trish's tragic death, but he spoke from Trish's family home, where her parents, two brother and two sisters are grieving. The investigation into the crash has yet to reach a conclusion, but Gary believes that the road surface may have played a part. It was wet, and there had been accidents there before.

"The road she was going on, parts of it are very bad. They have highways halfway down to the west and then it stops and we're left with the rest of the roads. The road surfaces have to be checked. If you don't have your car right, a garda will come after you, or you'll fail the NCT. They should do the same with the roads." Gary says Trish was a careful driver. "She wouldn't have been speeding."

Ruane appealed to drivers over the Bank Holiday weekend to concentrate on the road, and said the government should offer more support to families whose loved ones have been killed in Ireland's increasing number of traffic accidents.

"They should start driver training in schools. If people skid on the road, they don't know what to do.

People need to be taught to control their car, " Ruane said. "People need to take extra care and concentrate on the road. You see some people on the phone, or doing something else, like, you can only do one thing at a time. Speed is a factor, but there are people who aren't speeding and they're dying too.

"Everyone hears these kind of things. You hear it on the radio, you see it on the news, you read the papers, it's so common now. It's only when it comes to your own door you realise how difficult it is and how difficult it must be for every family it happens to. I heard there was another young lad killed last night.

Every day of the week this is happening, but you just don't realise what it means until it comes to your door."

Government's attempts to improve road safety are 'a major failure' THE chief executive of FBD insurance, Philip Fitzsimmons, blamed poor enforcement for the increasing tally of deaths on Irish roads. At an Oireachtas Enterprise Committee discussion on the reform of the insurance sector last week, Fitzsimmons said that attempts by the government to improve road safety were "a major failure". He added, "this failure hinges on lack of law enforcement and a lack of resources". Fitzsimmons also expressed his astonishment at the high number of cars being brought into the country. "I am astounded to hear that 70,000 used cars are imported, " he said. "Only in the past few days we have analysed our experience on our motor book and it has emerged that the accident frequency on older cars has risen considerably. There was a time when all insurers imposed loadings on old cars. We have not done so in recent years, but the warning signs are that the trend is changing."

A recent study by three doctors on behalf of the HSE revealed that 43% of all people who died in road accidents had alcohol in their system. A third of the deceased drivers tested had alcohol in the bloodstream. The report stated that males were five times more likely to be the driver of an accident involved in a fatality. Two out of three of examined adult pedestrians who had died in road accidents had alcohol in their system. Those with the highest blood alcohol levels were in their 20s.

To date this year, 172 people have been killed on Irish roads. Thirty-four pedestrians, 43 vehicle passengers, 83 drivers, three cyclists and nine motorcyclists have all been in fatal accidents this year, up seven on 2005.

The latest victim was a 90-year-old man who was killed when the car he was driving hit a JCB in Coole, Co Westmeath on Friday.