A SENIOR staff nurse with decades of experience dealing with road tragedies committed three dangerous driving offences within minutes of each other, a court has heard.
The incident, Letterkenny District Court was told, was one of the worst cases of dangerous driving witnessed by experienced officer Garda Damian Mulkearns.
Mary O’Callaghan, The Commons, Bellinaleck, Co Fermanagh is a senior specialist nurse at Enniskillen Hospital.
She admitted the offences which took place two days before Christmas last year as she drove into Ballybofey from Donegal Town.
Judge Paul Kelly heard how Ms O’Callaghan, who is 59, swerved in and out of a line of traffic overtaking cars and narrowly missing both oncoming vehicles and a traffic island.
Defence solicitor Patsy Gallagher said the nurse was extremely embarrassed and regretful about the offences which were “a single blight on 40 years of driving.”
He said she had had a “difficult shift” the night before, had friends arriving for Christmas and had her priorities in the wrong place.
The solicitor added that it could have been a “very sorrowful Christmas had things gone the other way and there had been a crash.”
Judge Kelly told the defendant: ” I am amazed at someone in your position would drive in such a manner; Gda Mulkearns description of the incident as being one of the worst he has ever seen speaks volumes about these incidents.”
Sentence was adjourned until October 13 with the nurse sent on the Pro-Social Drivers Course and ordered to pay €150 towards the cost of it.