The wife of a senior Irish diplomat who broke her ankle while crossing the street in Dublin has been awarded €16,700 in damages against Dublin City Council.
Mrs Caitríona MacKernan, who sustained the injury when she stepped into a hole in the road, told her counsel, Mr Paul Binchy, in the Circuit Civil Court yesterday that the injury had caused her a lot of problems.
Her husband - who was with her at the time - is Mr Pádric MacKernan, the Ambassador to France and a former secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
She said she had difficulty with shoe sizes because of swelling and pain, particularly while standing. She had to attend a lot of functions with her diplomat husband.
Mrs MacKernan, of Kenilworth Square, Dublin, told Judge Elizabeth Dunne she had been out walking with her husband and, while crossing the street at the junction of Highfield Road and Rathgar Road, she had stepped in "quite a deep hole" in the tarmacadam.
She had twisted her right ankle severely and could not walk afterwards. A knee-high cast had been applied in hospital, and she needed crutches afterwards.
Mrs MacKernan said she still suffered intermittent discomfort and weakness in her ankle. When Mr John Doherty, counsel for the local authority, suggested she would have seen the hole if she had been looking where she had been going, Mrs MacKernan said she could not be expected to walk around always looking down at her feet.