‘The programme challenges your thought process, your behaviour’ – how unique course helps people to drive safer

By Nathan Molloy, The Sligo Champion

On most weekends, dozens of participants undergo the Pro Social Ireland Programme to improve their driving.

The initiative was set up in 2012 in Donegal at the request of then District Court Judge Paul Kelly, Inspector Michael Harrison and the probation services’ Tim Coughan in response to the county’s very poor record on road traffic collisions in the 2000s.

Riverstown. Co Sligo native Michael Galvin is the manager of the Pro Social Ireland Driving Programme. He was a member of An Garda Síochana for 31 years before retiring from the force in 2021. He then went on to work for one of the country’s main insurance companies before taking up his current role.

Speaking to The Sligo Champion, Michael says that since the initiative began 14 years ago, it has expanded in numbers and now is available across much of the country.

“Back then in 2012, when the first programme eventually got going, it had five participants and now in 2026, we are on target to present the course to over 400 participants nationwide.

“There has been quite a steady increase since we started and of course, we started in Donegal back in that time, but we have since spread throughout the north-west, the midlands, Galway, Cork, Dublin, Louth, and Tullamore. We are expanding shortly into Limerick as well. We are going nationwide, that’s the plan.”

The programme which is primarily funded by the Probation Service is designed to work with those who have come to the Pro Social Ireland’s attention as a direct result or consequences of their driving behaviour.

Its aim is to reduce re-offending, reduce road collisions as well as reducing serious injuries and fatalities, all of which they hope will contribute greatly to make roads safer.

Participants are usually referred to the programme through the courts, but they can also be referred by concerned family and friends and a person can refer themselves. Other participants include prisoners who are coming to the end of their sentences for serious road traffic offences.

Pro Social Ireland also delivers The Garage Programme, which is aimed at educating young drivers about road safety. It is predominantly provided in Donegal, but also at the Oberstown Children Detention Centre.

Over the course of the Pro Social Driving Programme which runs from 11am to 5pm most Saturdays and Sundays, participants must complete four modules, Emotional Control, Responsibility, Driving Whilst Impaired and Peer Refusal Skills, and Consequences.

Michael explains that there is not actually a driving aspect to the programme, instead the focus is a cognitive behavioural approach to driving behaviour.

“There is no driving aspect first of all. Our programme is totally on improving behaviour, and the four modules, there is emotional control, responsibility, driving whilst impaired and peer refusal skills and consequences. They are all very impactful.

“Our facilitators are trained counsellors. It’s trying to motivate the clients in the programme to open up and share their experience. It’s not a question of just ticking the box, going to class and getting the programme completed and getting a report for court.

“The programme challenges your thought process, your behaviour so that is where that comes from. And we find that’s very impactful. In saying that all the various aspects of the programme have their own impact you know. It is provided over two days. We feel that it makes a big impact on the course’s participants.”

The final module, Consequences, highlights the importance of how every decision a driver makes has certain consequences. Participants will hear from emergency service workers as well as people who have been impacted by serious road traffic collisions in this module. Michael who lost his brother in a road traffic collision 18 years ago, says that this part of the programme is very hard hitting for those doing it.

“There are horrific consequences from a road traffic collision, involving death or serious injury. Regrettably I have experienced that myself, having lost my youngest brother in a road traffic collision 18 years ago. I know only too well the huge impact that has on family, and on a community. From personal experience, words could not explain that impact.

“On our programme in the interviews with paramedics who have gone through that process of dealing with very seriously injured and dying people on the side of the road.

“And also, we have a very impactful interview with a sister of a young man who was killed in a road traffic collision who talk about the impact on her and her family. We feel that these are very hard hitting, but are real life. It is not somebody talking from a book, it is somebody that has experienced this, the former paramedic experienced this.

“One of the videos is very chilling. It deals with a paramedic, he saved the life of an individual on the road only for that individual to be paralysed from his neck down for the rest of his life. And he met that individual some years later in his work field again, he was coming out to a house somewhere in an ambulance, and it was the same person paralysed and in that intervening period, that person’s life has been turned upside down.

“We feel that the interviews with those that have walked the walk, in terms of losing relatives that have been involved in a roads traffic collision causing death or serious injury, that they are very impactful on participants. And I would agree on that from personal experience.”

Michael Galvin, the manager of the Pro Social Driving Ireland programme. © Mary’s Meals Ireland

12 is the maximum number of people that can do the course at the one time. According to one of the most experienced programme facilitators, they frequently get extremes in the group from people who had a long history of road traffic offences to someone who is on their very first offence. However, she says that this shows why peer learning is an important aspect of the course.

“The peer learning is so important. A group discussion can be so much more powerful than the presentations by facilitators alone. We frequently get extremes in the group, probation clients who have a long history of motor offending, and others on their first offence.

“Some participants are in recovery from addiction, their accounts of their struggles, regrets and the harm they caused are very powerful for young people beginning on that road.

“Some participants are already pro social in giving advice to the group, insurance cover. Some participants talk about the impact on themselves and their families on having a lengthy driving ban, the actual practicalities of not being able to go to work, losing their freedom. Some participants have sustained serious injuries to themselves in car crashes.

“One 23-year-old who had life changing injuries had to sit through the course. Even though his attitude was still very commendable, he took responsibility for the collision, and acknowledged it was caused by speed alone, as he was late for work. It led to other group members to question why his speeding was ever justified.”

Michael believes that the course being a group experience rather than a one-on-one experience means that participants cannot hide.

“You are exposed to a wide variety of people in that room, you have to be accountable yourself in that room, for your own actions. You are asked to account for why your actions have got you to where you are and why are you there. So yes, the programme in the group scenario is much more impactful, than if it was a one-on-one. Where you would be able to hide more so.”

In the past month, 17 people have lost their lives on Irish roads with fears that this year could see more than 200 Irish road deaths for the first time since 2010. For Michael and the programme’s facilitators, they believe that if one person who participated in the programme was alive because of it, then that was a huge impact.

“For myself and our staff here in the office, the administered centre of the programme is in Letterkenny. If we can impact even one individual in that whole year. So, if we say 400 people are going through that programme this year. If one of those people, is going to be alive next year because of the programme, isn’t that a huge impact? It is immeasurable.”

Pro Social Ireland currently have 18 facilitators, and they are hoping to expand to 23 next year. Michael feels that he and his team are an important and necessary cog in trying to reduce the road death nationwide and adds that they are available to present the programme anywhere in the country within reason.

“We feel we are doing our bit here, to help with the road safety. Regrettably the numbers last month are off the chart, we are way ahead of where we should be in terms of road deaths for this year. It’s very topical at the moment, as you can imagine both here and, in the UK, with the motorway carnage.

“We feel like we are one of the stakeholders that have responsibility in trying to reduce these numbers in collaboration with many other groups, the RSA, An Garda Síochana, and so on. We are just one cog in the wheel, but we are a very important and necessary cog in that wheel.

“There is room for us to grow significantly, and that is happening. You see our numbers that are referred particularly in Dublin, Dundalk, Galway, those are increasing year-on-year, week on week. I think we are doing something right if that is the case. We are available to present and deliver that programme really anywhere in the country at the moment within reason.”