>> Martina Breen from Firhouse, Co Dublin, told Liveline how it took her six-and-a-half hours to get home from Rathdrum, Co Wicklow. Her sevenweek-old daughter Ava and mother Mai were in the car with her. While Martina had a bottle for the baby, her mother, who is a diabetic, needed something to eat within a couple of hours. "Luckily she saw someone she knew in the line of cars and he was able to give her something to eat, " she said.

>> Sixty-something caller Frank told how his wife was forced to urinate into two plastic freezer bags during their seven-and-a half-hour journey home. "We left the city centre at 3.20pm and didn't get home to Wicklow until after 11 o'clock, " he said. "I was tempted to step out of the car myself but it wouldn't have been the thing to do . . . there were ladies at the wheels of their cars all around."

>> Another woman texted the Pat Kenny show to tell of how her husband was forced to drive up the opposite side of the motorway so she could give him their 10-week-old baby who needed feeding. She had left Loughlinstown at 4.15pm and, three hours later, had to call her husband to get him to collect the child. "I didn't get home until 9.05pm, " she said. "My baby was so distressed and I am so angry and upset. Do these people not have a grain of intelligence?"