Pavee Point has described social media commentary about the Travellers involved in the M9 crash as “vile and racist”. Three of the five teenagers who died in the crash – Joey Carthy (15), his cousin Alex McCarthy (17) and Jerome O’Brien (18) – were from the Traveller community.Three sisters and one of their children, a seven-year-old boy, remain in a serious condition in hospital following the crash in the early hours of last Sunday morning.They were travelling in a car along the M9 when it was hit by a BMW carrying the five teenagers that was being driven the wrong way down the motorway in Co Kildare. Pavee Point codirector Martin Collins said the actions of the five who were in the car were wrong and had contributed to an “appalling tragedy” in which they had lost their lives and four other people had been badly injured. “I know it was reckless and dangerous, but there has to be some level of compassion and humanity for those five young people and their families also,” he said. “At the end of the day, you are talking about five young lads who are very immature doing what they thought was bravado.“I can understand people’s anger and frustration, but this could happen to any cohort of people in Irish society.“If the five were all settled people, we wouldn’t get the reaction that we are getting now. I can’t understand why people are making an issue of their ethnic origins. “To me it is totally irrelevant. The comments directed at the entire Traveller community is appalling stuff and that’s totally uncalled for.” Collins said one of the five who died, Kamil Pustkowski (17), was of Polish origin, but the Polish community in Ireland was not being blamed for the actions of one teenager. Collins said social media companies needed to start moderating their content in relation to Travellers. “Ireland is an outlier when it comes to effective and robust hate speech legislation,” he said.Collins said the decision to pull the RIP.ie death notice for Joey Carthy was taken because of the abuse directed at him and his family in the condolences page. Since then funeral notices have been published for the two other Travellers involved in the crash, Alex McCarthy and Jerome O’Brien, but comments have been turned off. Collins said the social media targeting of Travellers after the crash had been “relentless”. He said: “Some of the commentary is unbelievable – that they should be exterminated, put in concentration camps or gas chambers. “We’re getting calls here quite often since that tragedy happened from other Travellers who were very concerned just about how the whole tragedy has been covered and the narrative which has emerged from it, which is, as I say, very racist in nature.” Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre is a national non-government organisation, mostly funded by the Government, that advocates on behalf of the Traveller and Roma communities and is involved in antiracism campaigning for both communities.