{"id":336015,"date":"2026-03-08T23:08:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T23:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/336015\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T23:08:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T23:08:07","slug":"man-who-usually-drives-the-small-roads-caused-crash-in-panic-on-busy-limerick-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/336015\/","title":{"rendered":"Man who usually drives the &#8216;small roads&#8217; caused crash in panic on busy Limerick road"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AN ELDERLY man has been convicted in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.limerickleader.ie\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Limerick<\/a> District Court of colliding with a garda car in a hit and run incident outside the city.<\/p>\n<p>Pat Mollaghan, 84, of St Mel\u2019s Road, Townparks, county Longford, was travelling to a medical appointment on April 10, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>On the Castletroy Roundabout, Mr Mollaghan hit the side of a garda vehicle with his Toyota Corolla.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecuting Inspector Liam Wallace said in garda evidence, that there was \u201cminimal damage\u201d done to the garda car.<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.limerickleader.ie\/news\/national-news\/2029471\/search-for-51-year-old-man-missing-since-november-stood-down-as-gardai-issue-heartbreaking-update.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Heartbreaking update as search for 51-year-old man missing since November stood down<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The man &#8211; who pleaded guilty &#8211; did not appear in court due to a medical issue.<\/p>\n<p>Taking into account the facts of the case, Judge Patricia Harney said: \u201cI just have concerns\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Solicitor Darach McCarthy said in mitigation that the longest Mr Mollaghan \u201chas ever driven before was only a couple of kilometers\u201d, and \u201con this day he was driving hundreds\u201d of kilometres.<\/p>\n<p>Mr McCarthy said his client \u201cusually uses the smaller roads\u201d, but \u201call of a sudden he found himself on the motorway\u201d, and in the lead up to the collision, Mr Mollaghan was \u201cdehydrated\u201d and he panicked.<\/p>\n<p>The solicitor further added that the man\u2019s family was worried for him on the date in question.<\/p>\n<p>Mr McCarthy said that his client has no previous convictions.<\/p>\n<p>He further said that the man is \u201cterribly sorry\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The solicitor detailed that Mr Mollaghan is a small land-owner, and that the man had not been in trouble with the law before the incident.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe&#8217;s upset by all of this, judge\u201d, Mr McCarthy pointed out.<\/p>\n<p>The judge convicted the man of careless driving and the hit and run, and fined him a total of \u20ac900, giving him three months to pay the penalty.<\/p>\n<p>-Funded by the Court Reporting Scheme<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AN ELDERLY man has been convicted in Limerick District Court of colliding with a garda car in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,1396,7250,3181,43],"class_list":["post-336015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-limerick","tag-limerick-district-court","tag-longford","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}