A drunken Buncrana woman, who was almost SIX times the limit when she crashed a van at a local beach, has been banned from driving for three years.<\/p>\n
Caroline Forshaw, of Swilly Road, Buncrana, pleaded guilty to a charge of drink driving when she appeared before Buncrana District.<\/p>\n
A number of other charges against the 39-year-old carer were dropped in light of her early guilty plea.<\/p>\n
Sergeant Conor Mulkerns presented the evidence against Ms Forshaw, including how she was \u201cvisibly intoxicated\u201d when gardai encountered her at the beach.<\/p>\n
The court heard how gardai responded to a report of a traffic collision at Stragill Beach, Buncrana, on Thursday, May 15, 2025.<\/p>\n
On arrival at the coastal scene, the guards observed a black Peugout Partner with a 212-DL registration, which had been involved in a minor crash.<\/p>\n
Sgt Mulkerns said a female was at the location, who gave her name as Caroline Forshaw, and who subsequently made admissions that she had been driving the vehicle.<\/p>\n
The court was told that Ms Forshaw was \u201cvisibly intoxicated\u201d and was immediately arrested on suspicion of drink driving. <\/p>\n
She was then conveyed to Buncrana Garda Station, where a breath specimen came back with a reading of 124 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath, which is almost six times the legal limit of 22 microgrammes.<\/p>\n
Defence solicitor Ciaran MacLochlainn said his client made full admissions on the day and was fully cooperative with the guards.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy client is a 39-year-old lady. She\u2019s a single person and she\u2019s unemployed; she\u2019s on jobseekers allowance of \u20ac244 per week and she\u2019s currently a carer for her father.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr MacLochlainn explained what happened on the date of the arrest.<\/p>\n
\u201cHerself and her friend drove out to the beach at Stragill. They hadn\u2019t realised that the beach was a public place. A lot of people go there to learn to drive. That\u2019s where I learned to drive myself, so, it\u2019s not an unusual place for people to drive on occasion.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, she collided with the fence, and she offered to pay the farmer for the damage caused, but he told her to forget about it. He was very kind towards her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHer friend had allowed her to drive his vehicle, thinking that she had a full driving licence, but she didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
The solicitor said his client had wanted to deal with the matter at the first opportunity and put it behind her.<\/p>\n
Judge Ciaran Liddy noted Ms Forshaw\u2019s very early guilty plea, before imposing a mandatory three-year driving disqualification on the higher breath-alcohol reading.<\/p>\n
He also imposed a fine of \u20ac100, with six months to pay, striking out a number of other more minor charges, which weren\u2019t detailed in court.<\/p>\n
Buncrana woman was SIX times over when she crashed van at beach was last modified: October 10th, 2025 by Staff Writer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A drunken Buncrana woman, who was almost SIX times the limit when she crashed a van at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-80685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80685","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=80685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}