{"id":279015,"date":"2026-01-11T08:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T08:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/279015\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T08:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T08:36:09","slug":"wicklow-woman-who-was-nearly-four-times-over-alcohol-limit-is-disqualified-from-driving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/279015\/","title":{"rendered":"Wicklow woman who was nearly four times over alcohol limit is disqualified from driving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Karen Foley (48), of Charlesland Court, Greystones outside Bray Courthouse.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/57f02cf9-3787-4607-a3c3-f4dbff80e465.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Karen Foley (48), of Charlesland Court, Greystones outside Bray Courthouse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">A Wicklow woman, who the court heard has a long-standing alcohol addiction, has been disqualified from driving for three years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Karen Foley (48), of Charlesland Court, Greystones, appeared for sentencing at Bray District Court after pleading guilty to one count of driving a vehicle while exceeding the alcohol limit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ms Foley faced a further charge of careless driving, however, this was struck out following an agreement between the defence solicitor, Michael O\u2019Connor, and the prosecution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The court was told that at approximately 2:30pm on September 27, 2024, Ms Foley\u2019s Opel Corsa collided with a flower pot outside SuperValu on Church Road in Greystones. Ms Foley supplied a sample, which returned a reading of 188 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood <\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The legal limit for fully licenced drivers in Category B is 50 milligrams of alcohol per 100ml of blood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Judge David Kennedy noted that such a reading carries a mandatory penalty of a three-year driving disqualification.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Mr O\u2019Connor informed the court that his client suffers from a severe alcohol addiction, which she has attempted to address in recent months. He said she had previously attended rehabilitation and abstained from alcohol but had recently \u201cfallen off the wagon\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The court was told that Ms Foley is currently in receipt of social welfare payments and has not driven since the incident.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Judge Kennedy stated that had Ms Foley pleaded not guilty, she would have been facing a custodial sentence due to the exceptionally high alcohol reading.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The judge disqualified Ms Foley from driving for a period of three years and imposed a three-month prison sentence, which was suspended in full for one year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Funded by the Court Reporting Scheme<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Karen Foley (48), of Charlesland Court, Greystones outside Bray Courthouse. A Wicklow woman, who the court heard has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,8900,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-279015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-darragh-mccann","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115875557079934266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}