Debate contribution: Traffic Collision Sites: Privacy and Dignity

Debate contribution by Mr Mark Durkan on 8 December 2025.

MLA

Mr Mark Durkan

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

8 December 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Traffic Collision Sites: Privacy and Dignity

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5284998

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thanks, Mr Deputy Speaker. In closing today's debate, I thank every Member who has contributed. The seriousness of the issue has been made clear by the tone of the debate and the compassion shown in it. It is about coming together to protect families and to provide them with dignity, a modicum of humanity and the right to grieve in peace. It is good and refreshing that parties are unanimous in their support of action and of the families. The SDLP does not own the issue; it has been brought to councils by different parties and by independents. For me, however, the topic is deeply personal. When my sister Deirdre was killed in a car crash at just 18 years of age, our world stopped. It is a devastation that you do not overcome. You simply learn to live with the weight of that profound grief. Ms Dillon spoke earlier of her personal experience. Even now, two and a half decades later, I can recall every single detail of those hours in the immediate aftermath: the phone call from my daddy, who was driving, asking us to pray; the cries of my mother and my sisters; the hopelessness that we felt as we huddled in hope and in prayer; and then the second call to say that Deirdre was dead. What I cannot imagine is the added cruelty of having that horror filmed or shared by strangers, whether out of curiosity, for clicks or for social media likes. I cannot imagine my family learning of that tragedy from a post online or a message pinging into a public WhatsApp group, yet that is exactly what so many families here in the North have had to endure. The testimonies from the families involved in the campaign have been nothing short of heartbreaking. They are the experiences of people whom we know — our constituents; our neighbours — and I commend and offer condolences to those courageous families, some of whom are in the Public Gallery. Sixteen-year-old Lisa O'Donnell and her boyfriend were killed in a road traffic accident. Her mother did not hear that news from the police or a family member; it was broken on Facebook. As she stood in her kitchen, unpacking shopping, strangers online were already posting their condolences. The Bradley family spoke of their brother's motorbike accident. Strangers filmed his final moments, his attempted resuscitation and even his passing, uploading that to Snapchat before his children had even been told. The campaign carries the name of a young woman loved by her family and her community: Caoimhe O'Brien. Her mother, Marie, has described racing against the internet to reach her son before the rumours and posts did. Her words are worth repeating:

"A post can wait, a message can wait, a family's pain will last forever."

Those are the real-life consequences of the absence of legislation. That is what happens when the law lags behind technology and the new norms that should not be normal anywhere.

In the age of Snapchat, WhatsApp groups, Instagram stories and TikTok, news travels faster than compassion and faster than the speed at which police can knock at a door. For what? It is so that a random stranger can have their morbid curiosity satiated for a moment or two. Meanwhile, it is the families who are left to pick up the pieces. They are not only traumatised by the tragic loss of their loved one but haunted by the invasion that follows and the disturbing images that no one wants to see.

I am not judging all those who may have shared such content. Many of us will have done it. We will have been the first with the big news, even when it is really bad news. The campaign has worked already in some respects — at least, I hope that it has — by helping all of us to re-evaluate our response to incidents. As we have heard, Germany has taken decisive action on the issue, concluding that freedom of expression does not extend to capturing the final moments of someone's life for entertainment or intrusion. We owe it to our constituents to protect them from that violation of privacy and dignity. Mr Blair correctly identified that this is not just about social media, and he commended campaigners for their work with media outlets to redraw responsible reporting guidelines. Every day that we delay, we run the risk of another family going through what these families have endured. This is not something to be kicked into the long grass. The harm is happening now, and the protection is needed now. That is why we want to see the introduction of the protections before the end of the mandate. I welcome Mr Frew's suggestion that we explore what legislative vehicles are already in transit to which we may be able to tie this in a sensible and sensitive manner. I pay tribute to those who have carried the campaign on their shoulders while dealing with their grief and trauma: the O'Donnells, the Bradleys, the O'Briens and so many others. I thank Road Victim Support Northern Ireland-Donegal for its relentless advocacy. Ms Ferguson also rightly lauded the work that Life After has done primarily but not exclusively in our constituency. I can think of so many bereaved families who have channelled their enormous loss and insufferable grief into reducing not just the numbers of tragedies on our roads but the suffering of others. Many of those tragedies have happened on roads that we know well, such as the A5, where far too many families have received life-altering news. One life lost on any road is one too many. Caoimhe's law is just one part of our duty of care. We owe it to bereaved families to work together to make our roads safer, progress long-awaited projects such as the A5, improve road safety and invest more in education and information rather than just more enforcement. That said, today we have a chance to do something meaningful. Caoimhe's law is not just about censorship. It is not even about censorship: it is about decency and preventing further cruelty. It is about giving families the space to grieve without intrusion and ensuring that no parent has to compete with a social media feed to tell their child that their sibling has died. I wrote to the Infrastructure and Justice Ministers in the summer to ask that they implement Caoimhe's law. Minister Kimmins, whilst stating that the legislation would fall outside her policy remit, committed to supporting its introduction. In the South, the Department of Transport is bringing forward similar measures. Responding last month, Minister Long recognised the importance of the campaign and committed to engaging on the issue by agreeing to take part in a round-table discussion. I thank her for continuing to engage here today. All Members would be keen to get an update following that round-table discussion, as well as an update on how Ministers' commitment to support and engage can become a commitment to act. The Ministers of Justice and Infrastructure need to work together and with others, and we all need to work quickly to pass the much-needed legislation. Behind every accident, there is a family waiting for that devastating knock on the door. Nobody wants to get that knock, but let us make sure that that knock, if it is coming, comes before the notification on Facebook or elsewhere. In the words of the families who know the pain better than any of us, "It is not your story to tell", but it is our duty to speak out and do something about it.

1,276 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:11 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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