The North Monaghan race meeting at which two motorcyclists died at the weekend had a good safety record with no major casualties until this year. And the club had spent £50,000 this year on safety barriers similar to those used in grand prix racing.
Mr Paul Gilliland, assistant clerk of the course, said the greatest threat comes from the debris produced when a rider comes off during a road race. It had been the worst summer of tragedy in racing memory. Owen McNally, from Co Antrim, regarded as Ireland's brightest motorcycling talent, was killed in the Ulster Grand Prix when his machine crashed on the final lap.
Danny Robinson was killed in May and Philip Conroy died in July. A fourth rider, Waterford's Tony Carey, suffered head injuries in a crash at the Carrowdore 100 races.
In all, six of the riders who took part in last year's Glasslough race in Monaghan are now dead.
Last September, the Irish Sports Council called on the 32county Motorcycle Union of Ireland (to which it had donated a grant of £22,650), to set up an inquiry into deaths from motorcycle road racing.
The ISC's chief executive, Mr John Treacy, said it had asked the union to examine the safety aspects of motorcycle racing because of the high incidence of fatal accidents associated with the sport last year.
The union came up with a number of key recommendations for regulating the sport, including strict limits on the numbers of riders in any race.
Mr Sean Bisset, president of the union's southern centre, said yesterday that only for these new regulations the number of fatalities at Monaghan could have been much higher.
The review also recommended the use of safety bales, which were very much a feature of the corner on the Monaghan race circuit where Mr McClean lost control of his bike on Sunday.
Mr Seamus O'Reilly, the accident and emergency consultant surgeon at Craigavon Area Hospital, stressed last night that regardless of airbags or anything else - "if a rider comes off his bike at 70, 80 or 100 m.p.h. he faces probable fatal injury."
Hospitals were seeing more and more of this type of accident because in general the bikes are too powerful and the roads are "not capable of taking that type of speed", he added. Ultimately, road racing could go by the board, he believed, because the toll in terms of the numbers of young men killed or maimed was quite terrible.
"It's time for a change, all right" Mr Bissett conceded. "Either we stop it or there will have to be some major changes."
The Geneva-based Federation Internationale Motorcycliste, which regulates grand prix motorcycle racing worldwide, does not recognise road racing - even though it permits it.
The possibility of a dedicated race track for motorcycle racing may well be seen as a viable alternative if Ireland follows the experience of most other European countries and bans it from the roads.