Mother and son off the road for driving with no insurance
Her “misled” son, Michael, 18, was fined and disqualified from holding a licence after pleading guilty to driving without insurance on five occasions, including three times within five days. Insurance cover, the court heard, was withdrawn from her son’s car after a difficulty with a direct debit bank order.
In a separate case, Ms Farrell, from Ardmanagh, Schull was also fined and disqualified from driving for not having insurance when she appeared in Bandon District Court yesterday.
Although the charges were not linked, Judge James McNulty referred to the “cross fertilisation” of the cases in that Ms Farrell, at a previous district court hearing into her son’s cases, had admitted it was her fault that the teenager was not insured.
The judge said that Ms Farrell was fully aware that her son’s car or cars were uninsured. He described it as “carelessness bordering on criminal, allowing her son to be exposed to criminal prosecution.”
He said that if Ms Farrell’s case had been a stand-alone matter and he had never heard of her or her family, her plea of not having insurance in April of this year being an honest mistake would be credible and acceptable.
But the judge said that “given her acquaintance” with insurance matters that arose several months earlier in relation to her son’s detection, she should have been more prudent and attentive.
Judge McNulty said her son may have been naive and bordered on careless.
But the judge stated: “Irishmen are slow to question their mammies when their mammies say that everything is in order.”
The judge applied the probation act on three insurance offences on dates between December 1 and December 4, 2004, giving the teenager the “benefit of the doubt” in the belief that his insurance affairs were in order and that he was misled by his mother.
Farrell, an apprentice mechanic, who was also stopped by gardaí in Schull on January 21 and March 19 earlier this year, was fined a total of €600 and disqualified from driving for six months. His solicitor Flor Murphy said Farrell had “disqualified himself” by not driving since the cases were first brought before Schull District Court in September.
Neither Farrell nor his mother had previous convictions.
Ms Farrell, who was detected by Garda Robert Crowley at Ballylangley, Bandon, on April 19, also admitted in court to not having insurance.
Her solicitor Raymond Hennessy said she was insured to drive a family car and “honestly believed” she was a named driver on a second policy for a “runabout” car.
She was fined €500 and disqualified from driving for 12 months. Bail was fixed for appeal purposes.
In a continuing investigation into the murder in West Cork of French woman, Ms Toscan du Plantier nine years ago, housewife Ms Farrell remained a key witness in the garda case.
She allegedly told gardaí she saw the self-confessed chief suspect in the murder case, journalist Ian Bailey, at a location close to the townland where the body was discovered. However, two months ago, she withdrew her statements.
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