Portlaoise Court: Drink driver had whiskey on passenger seat
The case was heard at Portlaoise District Court. File image
THE use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology by gardaí led to a man appearing before Portlaoise District Court this week on a charge of drink driving.
Garda Sergeant JJ Kirby said that, while gardaí were on mobile patrol at 8.50am along the M7 at Balladding, Ballybrittas, their ANPR detected a car whose tax was out of date.
When they stopped the car and were speaking with the driver, they saw a near-empty bottle of whiskey on the passenger seat of his car.
When tested, the driver returned a reading of 51mc of alcohol per 100ml of breath.
Arising from the incident, Gabor Rozsa from Apartment 5, Kildare House, Claregate Street, Kildare pleaded guilty to drink driving.
Defence solicitor Josephine Fitzpatrick said that her client’s mother had been in hospital at the time in Hungary and he wasn’t able to travel to visit her, so he “sought solace in the bottle”.
She said the 46-year-old defendant works as a general operative with an asbestos management company and was asking for the driving disqualification to be postponed, to allow him time to get his affairs in order.
Judge Susan Fay convicted Mr Rozsa of the offence, fined him €350 and disqualified him from driving for two years, with the disqualification to take effect from 1 August.
