Drive on Mary and don’t be so hard on yourself

WASN’T it so refreshing to hear an Irish politician being so honest over the radiowaves yesterday?

Less than 24 hours after she mistakenly drove her Hyundai Coupe along the length of the pedestrian- only plinth in Leinster House and then bumped down steps on the other side, Fine Gael TD Mary Mitchell-O’Connor recounted her side of the story in a series of radio interviews.

Normally it’s near impossible to pull an apology from an errant TD, but Mary was falling over herself to apologise.

“I do apologise. My God, I cannot believe I could have done such a thing. I’ve got wonderful texts and emails, but I think the one that really, for me, stands out is a woman that wrote to me and said she could understand it... and then she signed off and her last few words were ‘Go n-éiri an bóthar leat’.”

There mustn’t have been a woman in the country who didn’t want to comfort Deputy Mitchell- O’Connor as male presenters on Newstalk and RTÉ put brakes on their laughter, displaying gifted diplomatic skills as they eschewed comments that could possibly be construed as sexist.

Early in the interview, RTÉ presenter John Murray asked her if people were being cruel?

“Oh God no. I deserve it, I think really... I was just driving along. I honesty did not see those steps. I did see all those photographers and cameras rushing. I honestly thought they were rushing to photograph something behind me. And next thing, bang, bang, bang,” she practically whispered, the shame apparent.

Mary — who admitted that she was going to pay a trip to her local opticians yesterday — had no recollection of driving up the ramp.

“There wasn’t a ramp,” she insisted to Murray, a former Government press secretary who knows the plinth of Leinster House all too well.

“And really I’ll have to go back and look at it today and think how did I do this. I don’t think I went up a ramp... I just [she sighs] really can’t explain it because it was one of those cringing moments that I’d love to forget and I’m sorry the cameras and the flash photographers were all there to record it.”

And all of this the day after the European Court of Justice declared that lower insurance premiums for women drivers could not be justified.

“I’ll be thinking of it when I’m 80,” a doleful-sounding Mary lamented. “This is what I did on my first day.”

At that stage John Murray couldn’t even take it any further. “Aah Mary, don’t be so hard on yourself.”