The main legislation dealing with road safety has been updated and modernised regularly over the years but yet six out of 10 people due before the courts on drink-driving offences are able to escape without a conviction.
This is a scandalous state of affairs, of course, and a sad indictment of the piecemeal fashion in which successive administrations have contrived to play catch-up with those who have routinely, and with success, played ducks and drakes with the system.
In the first instance, however, fault must be laid where it is most deserved and that is with those drivers who, outrageously, still blithely sit behind the wheel of a motor car after they have consumed alcohol.
More than 20,000 such people were before the courts for drink-driving offences between January 2013 and May 2015.
In this day and age, after all that is now known about the devastation wrought on families and communities by such motorists, that anybody at all, let alone such a vast number, still think it is OK to drink drive betrays such inherent ignorance and selfishness as to be almost beyond belief.
One such devastated family is that of four-year-old Ciaran Treacy, who was killed after the car in which he was travelling, with his mother and brother, was involved in a crash at Portlaoise on April 17 last year.
Last week Ciaran's mother Gillian, on behalf of herself and her husband Ronan touched deeply the hearts and minds of the nation when she described the shocking impact that a drink driver had had on their lives and on that of their extended families.
Source: Editorial, Irish Independent, 02/11/15
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