Minister to meet mum of drink drive victim

Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe and officials are to meet with the mother of Waterford man, Brendan Donnelly, who was killed on the road by a drunk driver.

Christina Donnelly has since her son’s death been campaigning for key changes in the drink-driving laws, including the introduction of a minimum, mandatory, six-year prison sentence for drivers found over the permitted alcohol limit in fatal accidents, with no good behaviour discounts.

She was in the Dáil public gallery yesterday as Mr Donohoe said more than 12,000 people are currently disqualified from driving due to intoxication.

The minister, along with officials from the department road safety division, will, before the year’s end, sit down with Mrs Donnelly, who has been campaigning tirelessly for “Brendan’s law” since her 24-year-old son died in a crash outside Castlemartyr in East Cork on October 26, 2009.

Mr Donohoe met briefly with the family yesterday in the Dáil building, but a full meeting will take place before Christmas.

Mrs Donnelly also wants a new, get-tough policy with longer licence disqualifications for those who drink-drive and cause accidents in which others are injured or killed.

She is also campaigning for any driver involved in a fatal collision who tests positive and is over the limit to be suspended from driving until their case is heard before the courts.

Brendan Donnelly died alongside his friend, Lee Salkeld, when the car they were travelling in was struck by Anthony Long, 29, who was drunk and driving on the wrong side of the road. Long was jailed for five years in November 2010 for dangerous driving causing both deaths. He served three years and seven months.

Cork Circuit Criminal Court was told the father-of-two had been drinking since 3pm the previous day and he was driving “like a bat out of hell” when the fatal collision occurred.

Long, the court heard, drank 11 cans and bottles of beer, seven pints of beer, two vodkas, three After-Shocks and had a line of cocaine before attempting to drive home after a row with his wife. He drove his car head on into the other car on the main Waterford-Cork road.

Mrs Donnelly, who wears a lock of her son’ hair and still rings his mobile to hear his mailbox message, said her campaign is not about bitterness or revenge.

“I don’t want any parent to get that terrible knock on the door from the gardaí that I got,” she said.

Meanwhile, Mr Donohoe said figures up to September 29 showed 12,248 people are prohibited from driving, under legislation dating between 1961 and 2010. But he could not accept calls for the automatic suspension of a licence of a driver involved in a fatal accident, if they subsequently fail a breathalyser test.

Mr Donohoe told Independent TD John Halligan that under the Constitution it is a “matter for the courts to make a disqualification order preventing a person from validly holding a driver’s licence for a period of time.” In the forthcoming Road Traffic Bill he intended to deal with the issue of drugs driving.

Mr Donohoe, expressing his sympathies to the families of the two men who died in the Cork crash, said he acknowledged the legitimacy and commitment of the families to ensure such a tragedy did not occur again and said he would listen carefully to their proposals.

Yesterday, the Road Safety Authority said 140 people lost their lives on the roads so far this year, which is about the same as this time last year.