A Cork woman who was driving on the wrong side of the road when her car collided with another vehicle has been banned from driving for three years.<\/p>\n
Liz Barry (68) of Ballydevlin, Goleen, pleaded guilty at Bantry District Court to drink driving. She admitted the facts of a dangerous driving charge, which was reduced to careless driving.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard a two-vehicle collision occurred at Ballyrisode, Goleen, on June 18, 2026.<\/p>\n
Barry was driving on the wrong side of the road when the collision happened. The second vehicle was spun into a ditch. Barry had to be cut from her car and was assessed at the scene. Neither driver suffered serious injuries, but both cars were damaged.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed observed that Barry was slurring her words and there was a smell of alcohol. She failed a roadside breath test and was arrested.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At Bantry Garda Station, she returned a reading of 106mg of alcohol per 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 50mg, placing her in the category carrying a three-year disqualification.<\/p>\n
Defence solicitor Flor Murphy said the crash had been a serious wake-up call. He said Barry had not driven since, had given up alcohol, attended treatment services and had strong family support.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Murphy said Barry worked in the family business, was contrite, ashamed and embarrassed, and had taken responsibility for her actions. The other driver had been compensated through insurance, he said.<\/p>\n
Judge Joanne Carroll said Barry was a mature person with no previous convictions. She said Barry had driven on the wrong side of the road but had since stopped drinking and engaged with treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody can make mistakes and errors can be made,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Judge Carroll disqualified Barry from driving for three years for drink driving. On the reduced careless driving charge, she fined her \u20ac300, allowing four months to pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Cork woman who was driving on the wrong side of the road when her car collided with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,79,54,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-671982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-court","tag-cork-news","tag-courts","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671982","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=671982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}