Funerals take place for three Co Tyrone road crash victims Imelda Quinn, Mary Duffy and Jennifer Acheson

Mourners at the funeral of Imelda Quinn from Galbally, who died after a single-vehicle collision on the M1 motorway at Tamnamore, were told the 40-year-old mother-of-two was “a gentle nurse with not a bad bone in her body”.

Nursing colleagues had formed a guard of honour outside St John’s Church in Galbally as her wicker coffin arrived.Inside the church Father Paddy McGuckin said: “Without a doubt Imelda’s family have gone through great loss in her sudden and unexpected death, but they will get over it because their hearts are in the right place, they believe in life after death and will take their strength from God.

“Let us consider the loss of a gentle nurse with not a bad bone in her body, my first memory of Imelda is when she sang at a concert for my leaving the diocese many years ago.

“She was eight or nine years of age when she toddled out on stage and sang a song in her own childish way.”

During the Requiem Mass family members carried items up to her coffin including her guitar and her passport and her nurse’s uniform, representing her passions for music, travel and her job.

A second crash near Cookstown on Boxing Day claimed the lives of three people – Patrick Rogers, 26, whose funeral took place on Friday and his mother-in-law Mary Duffy, 52, and Jennifer Acheson, 80.

Mr Rogers had been travelling with his family in a Nissan X-Trail while Mrs Acheson was in a Volkswagen Golf.

Mr Rogers’ wife Shannon and four children, Alannah, Eimear, Dylan and Eli, were also injured in the accident on the Dungannon Road shortly before 3.30pm.

At Mr Rogers funeral at St Joseph and St Malachy's church in Drummullan on Friday, his wife who was unable to attend wrote a letter saying: "I will love you always and I will be looking up at you when I need help and guidance."

She also wrote a letter which was read out at her mother Mary’s funeral at St Patrick's Church in Dungannon yesterday.

It said: “To mum, you were an inspiration, the best cook, the best craic, my go to girl you knew how to cheer me up and take my tears away.

“I loved my soup when I was upset to cheer me up, my best friend and the best mum and the best granny, the one who taught me everything.

“You made me the woman I am today, I will miss your smudges, we will never stop loving you and when we need you we will look up.”

A GoFundMe page, set up to help support Ms Rogers and her family, had raised more than £27,000.

The driver of the other vehicle involved in the collision, Mrs Acheson, was also laid to rest yesterday at Desertcreat Parish Church near Cookstown.

Mrs Acheson was the sister of Ulster Unionist peer and former MP John Taylor, now Lord Kilclooney.

She was pre-deceased by her husband Walter and survived by her five children.

Her death notice described her as being “profoundly loved and sorrowfully missed” by her friends and family.