DEPUTY CLARE DALY has said she accepts “full responsibility for what is a serious lack of judgement” after being pulled over by gardaí and breathalysed on Monday night. It emerged last night that the United Left Alliance member was pulled over by gardaí on Monday while on her way home from a meeting in the Southside of Dublin. In a personal statement published on her website last night, Daly said:
On Monday evening after meetings in the Dáil, I attended a meeting in Swords and left at 9.30pm for another meeting requested by a family of longstanding political acquaintances in the Southside of the city near the Canal. I arrived after 10pm and spent almost two hours discussing political issues which I had raised in the Dáil. Before I left I was offered a hot whiskey for a cold. I had no food since lunchtime and did not realise the implications of taking this house measure of hot whiskey.
She said that she left at midnight and as she was not familiar with the road to Ballyfermot at Kilmainham she took a right turn onto the South Circular Road. There is no right turn at this junction and a passing Garda patrol car saw her turning, and pulled her over. Although a number of today’s papers are reporting that Daly gave a urine sample, in her statement she says:
I was breathalysed but this was not satisfactory and was brought to the Kilmainham Garda Station where a blood sample was taken.
Deputy Daly said that she found it “surprising that the gardaí in Kilmainham released this information to tabloid journalists before 11am”. However, she added that gardaí implementing road safety “have a job to do and I support them”. The TD concluded by saying that if the test result on the sample provided proves to be above the statutory limit, “I will accept the consequences and resolve that this will not happen again”.
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