Message sent out by Agriculture Minister is shameful, says road safety campaigner
THE chairperson of the road safety group PARC has said it’s a “disgrace” that Barry Cowen could keep driving for so long on a learner permit in his capacity as a public representative.
The Agriculture Minister has said he was profoundly sorry for a drink-driving ban in 2016 that happened while on a provisional permit and described it as a “stupid mistake”.
Susan Gray, whose husband Stephen was hit and killed by an unaccompanied learner driver on a road in Donegal in December 2004, said Mr Cowen’s Dáil statement left many unanswered questions.
“This is totally unacceptable. What message is that sending out to all drivers? It’s shameful. Especially when you’ve lost someone on the roads like that. It makes you more determined to get the answers and try to get some positive change as a result,” she said.
Ms Gray, a road safety campaigner, told the Irish
Independent that Mr Cowen had called her directly before his statement to the Dáil.
“He phoned me yesterday [Tuesday] morning about 10.30 and it was to apologise for the drink-driving offence. He knew he did wrong and he regretted it and he wanted to give his apology to me and the members of our group and he was offering to work with us on any road safety category and to send out a clear message to anyone not to do what he did,” she said.
“So I went on then to ask about outstanding issues not related to the drinkdriving offence but that he was driving on a learner permit and I explained that my husband was killed by an unaccompanied learner driver. He said he was making a statement on it in the Dáil.”
Ms Gray went on to ask the Fianna Fáil minister to clarify other issues including how long he had been on a driver’s permit but that he “couldn’t say”.
“I asked him what number [permit] are you on; 14,
15? He couldn’t say what number it was. He couldn’t say at all. I then asked him what age he was when he started driving. He said it was many years ago, he wouldn’t know. Sure he was 49 when the drink-driving incident occurred.
“I said, ‘If you started when you were 20, then you’d be on your 10th permit or whatever.’ But he couldn’t tell me that.”
She also said he was unable to say when he finally passed his driving test as he could not remember and did not have his licence to hand. Nor could he tell her how many penalty points he incurred as a result of the incident and he would have to check on that information.
He had applied “many years ago” to take the test but did not sit it and just kept renewing his permit until a few years ago when he finally sat the examination.
Question marks also hang over how the Offaly politician travelled up and down to the Dáil during his tenure as a
TD, how many times he drove unaccompanied and whether he always displayed his learner L plates, she said.
‘I asked him how many learner permits he’d had but he couldn’t tell me that’
“I said to him, ‘You were in the Dáil as a TD from 2011 to 2016; how did you drive up and down there every day unaccompanied and no L plates?” she said.
Ms Gray said that Mr Cowen had not answered a single one of her group’s follow-up questions.
“That means we have to ask the Taoiseach to call on him to find out,” said the road safety campaigner.
“The public deserves this otherwise they’re being sent a very, very dangerous message. Everyone’s saying, ‘How come he got away with all that?’”
She said that she appreciated the phone call from the minister apologising but she took the opportunity to remind him that there were “loads of outstanding issues” from driving on a learner permit.
“These are issues that we want answers to now and will show how sincere he is and if he’s nothing to hide then he should answer them,” she said.
Mr Gray is now calling on the Government to close the legal loophole that allows motorists to keep on driving for lengthy periods of time on a learner’s permit.