Keating calls for change after death of brother in Mayo crash
Ronan Keating and members of the Keating family pictured at his brother Ciaran's funeral.
Ronan Keating has called for stronger penalties for those convicted of fatal road traffic offences following the death of his brother in a Mayo collision.
The singer’s brother Ciarán Keating, aged 57, of Kilsallagh Upper, Westport was travelling with his wife to see their son play a soccer match when he was killed in July 2023.
Dean Harte, aged 22, of Tyrellspass, Co Westmeath pleaded guilty at Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court to careless driving causing the death of Ciaran Keating and careless driving causing serious bodily harm to Annmarie Keating.
Harte failed to take to take a bend on a stretch of the N5 between Swinford and Bohola. His Audi drifted onto the wrong side of the road and there was a head-on collision with the Keatings' Ford Focus. He was given a 17-month suspended jail term and banned from driving for two years. Judge Eoin Garavan said there was no evidence of intoxication, no speed issues and “no egregious example of earlier dangerous driving”.
The court heard that a message had been sent from Harte's phone shortly before the collision, although he claimed it was sent much earlier. He also expressed genuine remorse in a letter to Keating's family.
Speaking on RTÉ’s on the sentence, Ronan Keating said: “You can’t get angry. You’re floored. You’re disappointed. The system is broken.
“All of the pain and the hurt is in losing somebody. This is just disgusting. It’s awful – this situation.”
He said it is now up to him and his family to “try to do something about it".
“We won’t let this lie. As a family, we don’t want to send some 22-year-old kid to jail. We don’t want to see some kid go to jail whose life is going to be thrown away. That’s not what we’re looking for.
“But what we’re looking for is to make sure somebody else doesn’t die because of careless driving. That some other family’s life is not going to be ripped apart.”
Keating criticised the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to charge Harte with careless driving causing death, rather than a more serious offence.
