Ed Byrne has lost his driving privileges for 18 months after being convicted of failing a breathalyzer test. (CBC)

A former Newfoundland and Labrador cabinet minister already serving a jail sentence for defrauding taxpayers was convicted Tuesday on a charge related to drunk driving.

Ed Byrne, who was sentenced earlier this month to two years less a day on two fraud-related charges involving misuse of his tax-free constituency allowance, has now been prohibited from driving for 18 months.

Byrne, who did not appear before Judge Greg Brown on Tuesday in provincial court, pleaded guilty to a charge of failing a breathalyzer. A charge of impaired driving was dropped.

The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary arrested Byrne in April 2008 after he ran a red light while driving in St. John's. Court was told on Tuesday that Byrne's blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit, and that he had consumed two tumblers of vodka before driving.

Defence lawyer Bob Simmonds told the court that Byrne had been under stress and strain at the time because of the fraud charges against him.

"Given this further fall from grace, he might have sought some solace in alcohol. He made a mistake here," Simmonds said.

Had prior conviction

In addition to temporarily stripping Byrne of his licence, Brown fined him $920, including a victim surcharge of $120.

Byrne had had a prior conviction for impaired driving, in 1991.

Outside the courtroom, Simmonds said Byrne, now in jail in Bishop's Falls, was reacting to the pressure of having been charged as part of a legislative spending scandal that has rocked Newfoundland and Labrador politics since 2006.

"I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but I can only imagine the stress that someone would be under with the publicity, the notoriety, that resulted from the other charges," Simmonds said after the hearing.

"Hopefully, I'm human enough to understand that people can make mistakes when they're under significant stress, and I think this was a mistake [that] was a ramification of the stress he was under at the time."

Byrne resigned as minister of natural resources in June 2006, when he was the first politician named in a scathing series of reports by Auditor General John Noseworthy. Byrne, 45, who had also been government house leader, is also a former leader of the provincial Progressive Conservative party.