The trial of a 23-year-old woman charged with dangerous driving causing the deaths of four young women in a road crash in 2015 has begun.
Dayna Kearney, from Crossneen in Carlow, is also charged with driving a dangerously defective vehicle at the time of the two-vehicle crash in January 2015 on the N78 Athy link road at Burtown, outside Athy in Co Kildare.
Niamh Doyle, Gemma Nolan and Aisling Middleton, who were all aged 19, along with 20-year-old Chermaine Carroll all died in the crash.
Ms Kearney is pleading not guilty to all charges.
The five women were travelling together in a Volkswagen Polo driven by Ms Kearney when the collision between the car and another vehicle occurred.
She was seriously injured.
The jury was told that Ms Kearney was also injured in the crash and had very little recollection of what had happened when she made a statement to gardaí.
Counsel for the State, Dan Boland BL, said Ms Kearney was driving her Volkswagon Polo, with her four passengers, into Athy from the Waterford motorway at 9.45pm on Tuesday 6 January 2015 when it seemed to veer over to the wrong side of the road and crashed "passenger side on" into a white Transporter van travelling in the opposite direction.
The jury was told that all of the tyres on the car had good threads, the road was straight and weather conditions were good, but some of the tyres had not been correctly inflated which caused the car with its heavy load to veer to the wrong side of the road.
The trial has been told the NCT certificate on Ms Kearney's car had expired eight months before the crash.
Sergeant Donal O'Sullivan said when he interviewed the driver after the crash she said she bought the 2001 Volkswagen Polo on website Donedeal under the impression the NCT was in place until March of 2015, but when her mother enquired about the certificate she was told it had in fact expired in May 2014, eight months before the crash.
The court was also told Ms Kearney was driving on a valid provisional drivers permit on the day of the crash, but was not accompanied by a driver with a full licence and did not have L plates on her car.
Garda Rachel Murray told the trial there were scuffs on the road after the crash, saying it is her opinion the car had veered over onto the wrong side of the road and afterwards when the tyres were examined there were issues with two of them.
Earlier, Tracy Norton told the trial she was driving behind the Transporter van when she saw the car driven by Ms Kearney swerve across the road.
The trial in front of Judge Eoghan Garavan and a jury of seven women and five men is expected to last for a week.
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