My remorse over horror car crash

By Michael O’Farrell

Investigations Editor

PRESIDENTIAL hopeful Gavin Duffy was involved in a horror road crash that maimed a young woman – yet he racked up a litany of driving offences in subsequent years.

The PR guru’s 1985 settlement with a student motorcyclist made national headlines. But this is the first time the serious accident has been linked directly to Mr Duffy, as he was sued over the accident under his birth name, Liam.

The case came seven years after the accident which resulted in Mr Duffy’s prosecution for driving with no insurance or driving licence in an incident that left the female motorcyclist in danger of losing her leg.

He was also found guilty of a reduced charge of careless driving resulting in lifelong injuries to the then 25-year-old university student he collided with.

After the accident – on August 21, 1978 near Dunleer, Co. Louth, the young woman – whose identity we have chosen to withhold – underwent several operations and was left with severe scarring and a permanent disability.

In 1978, aged 18, Mr Duffy – born William but known as Liam – was on the cusp of a broadcasting career that has since propelled him to become a millionaire and a presidential candidate.

He says he first started using Gavin as a broadcasting name in 1977 yet the only references to the new name the Irish Mail on Sunday could find in newspaper archives begin in the summer of 1979.

Mr Duffy told the MoS yesterday he formalised the name sometime in the 1980s by putting it on his passport but insisted he used it from the start of his broadcasting career.

His career took off under the name Gavin Duffy as he swiftly graduated from pirate radio in Drogheda to the national airwaves with RTÉ in the mid-1980s. During this time he was being sued by the female student and when the case got to the High Court in 1985, he was a household name in much of the country as a Radio Leinster presenter.

He was also head of training at Carr Communications, on the verge of breaking into RTÉ and engaged in a lobbying campaign to get the government to licence local radio stations.

But few knew who Liam Duffy was and the case proceeded under that name. After Mr Duffy admitted negligence the jury awarded damages and compensation for loss of wages amounting to £221,127.

Taking inflation into account this would be worth about €550,000 in today’s money. The average house price in 1985 was equivalent to about €46,600 according to the CSO.

Mr Duffy yesterday portrayed the experience as a formative one, emphasising his remorse over it when asked what voters should think.

‘I think when you look at the case, and you’ll see it was reported in the court, the remorse I felt over an accident like that,’ Mr Duffy said on the campaign trail in Co. Kildare.

‘There are 18-year-olds all over the country who sometimes get involved in accidents and it’s how you handle that and deal with that and I was full of remorse to the motorcyclist and, you know, I don’t think it’s appropriate to answer a question: “Do you think people who have been involved in an accident should vote for you?”

‘This is not about votes this is about at 18 years of age… did I handle it properly? What was my character like? Did I go and try and make contact with the injured party? When it came to a civil case you know I didn’t offer a defence so full compensation would be available. So I handled a situation I wish would have never happened to any 18-year-old but I handled it as well as one could in those circumstances.’

Despite his comments, the 1978 incident, although the most serious, is not the only time Mr Duffy has been prosecuted for driving offences.

In September 1981, when using the name Gavin, he was disqualified from driving for six months and fined after failing to appear in Drogheda Court to answer a number of driving offence summons.

At the same sitting he was also convicted of driving without a licence and insurance, having no tax displayed and failing to produce these documents at a Garda station when requested. It is not known if the court was aware of Mr Duffy’s change of name and prior conviction under a different name. He was back in court again a month later for a series of motoring offences.

By the 1990s, Mr Duffy’s business career was flourishing and he was en route to millionaire status through his stake in LMFM – the radio station granted a licence in 1989 when Ray Burke was communications minister. But his dangerous driving habits continued – albeit in more expensive cars.

In December 1993, Mr Duffy was convicted and fined £500 for dangerous driving in his black Porsche.

He also confirmed to the MOS he currently has three penalty points. Asked about what his subsequent driving record says about his character, Mr Duffy refused to see any connection.

He has only once referred publicly to his driving record in a Drogheda Independent article he wrote in 2012 in which a sanitised version of his offences refers to his 1981 motoring conviction.

As Mr Duffy never mentioned his change of name, an archive search does not show the 1978 incident.

This week Mr Duffy stated: ‘If you’re putting yourself forward as president… everything about you and everything in your background has to be tested… I fear no question, I welcome them all.’

PROFILE – The pig farmer’s son who became a DJ and millionaire

HE MAY have been born on a Kildare pig farm but there’s no indication that Gavin Duffy ever wanted for much as a child. For starters, Dorland Farm near Sallins was owned by his father Edward who bought it at auction in 1953. A haulier from Castlerea, Edward sold the farm in 1971 and bought the Gem bar and restaurant on Drogheda’s West Street when Gavin, then called Liam, was 11.

The bar later became the Weavers when it was taken over by Duffy’s brother Eamon.

Today, Duffy’s campaign HQ is across the street from the pub he grew up in with Eamon and another brother Pádraig – a solicitor once censured and fined €10,000 by the Law Society for a series of failures to honour client undertakings on property deals.

When Gavin was 15 his father was in court for allegedly punching and threatening to kill a 26-year-old waitress and throw her body in the Boyne. He was fined £60 reduced to £25 on appeal.

Such dramas aside the family business afforded Duffy a privileged lifestyle that included a Golden Palomino pony with which he hunted, pony-clubbed and showjumped before selling it in 1976 at the age of 16.

Having learned to drive, Duffy ran discos and entertainment shows in nearby towns and counties. His radio career began in 1980 with Local Radio Drogheda – a pirate that became Boyneside Radio – before leaving to form his own pirate, Community Radio Drogheda. By the early Eighties he’d moved to Leinster Radio in Dublin. A 1983 clampdown silenced the pirates in anticipation of a licensed regime for which Duffy actively campaigned.

Duffy – now working for RTÉ and Carr Communications – was among the investors that won the licence in Louth and Meath and LMFM was launched in 1989 by then-minister Ray Burke.

According to the Drogheda Independent at the time there was a ‘strong FF presence on the sixman board’ of LMFM. The return on their estimated €150k each investment was substantial when the station sold for €10m in 2004.

Duffy married RTÉ journalist Orlaith Carmody in the Canary Islands on St Patrick’s Day 1993. She was on the RTÉ board from 1999 to 2015 and together with Duffy ran Aerga Productions Ltd – which won a number of RTÉ commissions during her tenure.

In 1998 they bought Kilsharvan – their lavish Meath country estate, which made headlines as the first home to top the million pound mark in the region. His Irish Nationwide-funded property empire, once reported to be worth €100m, has been sold and just Kilsharvan remains, together with Duffy’s famed ambition which continues to expand abundantly.