September 2016, the month that Barry Cowen TD was stopped for drink driving, happens to be the month that morphed me into an unlikely road safety campaigner. A couple of weeks before my sister Donna Fox became one of the 188 people to die on the roads in the State that year, the ninth cyclist. Donna's death while not connected to drink driving, stopped life as I knew it, not just hers but my own. Life after the crash is a trauma in itself from which I am finally emerging, but you never get over such a horror, and it is a horror. At best we come through it bruised and changed forever but with a loved one to live on for and try to make proud in a way I suppose.
There was harsh criticism of many Road Safety activists and spokespeople in the last week, who were we to speak up let alone those who called for the Cabinet Minister's resignation and later sacking in my case anyhow, were seen as what was it again, oh yes "witch hunters" with a dubious agenda!
Road Safety is something that I see as crucial to all our lives. Deputy Cowen was a TD at the time of the speeding and later drink driving offences in 2016. A TD is a lawmaker, this is why the bar is higher - let alone for a Cabinet Minister. Deputy Cowen I have heard in the last week or so, when in my opinion forced into apologies at the twelfth not even eleventh hour, said that he wishes as way of atonement really to work in the future with groups promoting road safety and those bereaved by road deaths. I would have given more faith to that were it not that three months after been caught for one road offence he was caught for another, and four years on it took front page headlines to make him, we are lead to believe, finally disclose to the Leader of his party, what anyone would imagine he would have disclosed long ago given his position. Much has been said on the many other questions that have arisen since on his license issues and whether he ever sat a test, or did he ever use L or N plates etc. The focus on drink driving and speeding was bad enough without all these additional things that led many scratching their heads....
Anyhow, I welcome the decision to sack Barry Cowen. I appreciated Mary Lou Mc Donald's direct questioning in the Dail and it became clear watching it that the Taoiseach had no choice but to act and act now. Within hours he had, I would hope with pressure from the Tanaiste and Minister Eamon Ryan to do so.
It is my belief that the chuckle and wink antics of some TDs and others online in the days as this story unfolded not only showed them up, but unfortunately shows a rather juvenile attitude to road traffic offences. The amount of "but sure who hasn't penalty points, charges etc" shows an ingrained attitude that we must address. That's why campaigners don't go away quietly because we see that the message is lost on so many until sadly it visits their own door. I have no personal issue with Barry Cowen, I have never met him or to my memory had any contact with him in my own campaigns on cycling etc. Had he come out and squared with the people and took the questions in the Dail, had he made clear his wrong doing rather than try to drag it out and drip feed everyone, then start calling the gardai Pulse records into question, well maybe then I would not have been so harsh in calling for his removal from Cabinet. But he did and said as he chose to and that won zero respect from me.
Barry Cowen did not lose his Ministerial position due to his ambivalent attitude to road safety and road traffic laws, that would have happened immediately upon the breaking of the news. No, political pressure from the opposition and one hopes also from Fine Gael and the Green Party colleagues in government, terrible publicity and farcical utterances that the Taoiseach found himself in the position of making in the Dail today (Tuesday), and what no doubt is seen as a direct attack on the Gardai from a government minister is how Brian Cowen found himself sacked earlier tonight. Ego pulled the rug from under him in the end none of our complaints, but his lavish attacks on everyone but himself. That is how I see it.
I really hope that Barry Cowen does redeem himself in the eyes of road safety campaigners and victims by holding to his vow to be involved and of help going forward. It always comes across as blame and personal but for me it is not, it is about calling out wrong doing and trying to use it to highlight road safety and road deaths and injuries as something that can affect every single one of us. Driving comes with huge responsibility, it is not a mere right and something to be complacent about. Lives including ones own life depends on such vigilance.
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