The group leader of 30 German tourists who were involved in a bus crash in Co Clare yesterday said they had "probably" escaped injury because they were wearing seatbelts.
A car and the coach collided shortly after 9am on the Kilfenora Road, about five kilometres (three miles) from Ennistymon in north Clare.
The coach was travelling along a narrow, winding country road in bad weather at the time of the crash.
A unit of the fire brigade and an ambulance from Ennistymon were sent to the incident.
The occupants of the car, a man and a child, were treated at the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Ennis. The man was released at lunchtime yesterday and the child was expected to be discharged last night.
None of the passengers on the coach was injured. They were taken back to their hotel in Ennistymon in another vehicle.
The German driver of the coach was also lucky to escape serious injury as his vehicle was left-hand drive and the car impacted with the front-right of the coach.
A spokesman for the group, which had travelled from Dresden across some of Europe's busiest motorways to Ireland, confirmed yesterday that the German coach was fitted with seatbelts and that all passengers were wearing them at the time of the collision.
"We are all fine, no one has been hurt," group leader Michel Krause said. "I am fine too, it happened very quickly."
Asked if there were seatbelts fitted on the coach, Mr Krause said: "Yes, there are seat-belts on the coach, and we were all wearing them at the time. Yes, probably we could have been injured if we were not wearing them."
Mr Krause said he was aware of the school bus tragedy that claimed the lives of five teenage girls in Co Meath last Monday.
"It is a terrible tragedy, but in Germany we must all wear seat-belts on our buses."
Germany is one of several European countries which have introduced safety belt legislation for coaches ahead of an EU directive which will be adopted next year. Austria, Belgium, France, Romania, UK and the Netherlands have also pre-empted the move.
This week the European Parliament voted in favour of all new coaches having seat-belts fitted from 2006.
Ennistymon gardaí are investigating yesterday's collision.