The Department of Transport is reportedly close to resolving legal issues delaying the introduction of long-awaited legislation granting wider breath-testing powers to gardaí.
This follows a long period of consultation between officials at the Departments of Transport and Justice and the Attorney General, Rory Brady. The AG has also consulted with a number of senior counsel on the matter.
The Attorney General raised concerns about a likely challenge to the "random" aspect of the proposed random breath testing legislation, which was a key component of the first Road Safety Strategy 1998 to 2002, but has yet to be introduced.
The likely solution is drafting the legislation to increase garda powers to stop and breathalyse motorists at specific times, thought to be between 6pm on Fridays and 6am on Mondays, and between 10pm and 2am on all other nights.
These times are statistically shown to have the highest frequency of alcohol-related crashes.
Speaking at the launch of the Arrive Alive campaign last Monday, the Minister for Transport said road traffic legislation "is the most challenged in the country".
Evidence of this is seen from the decline in the number of people convicted of drinking and driving between 2001 and 2003, from 6,790 to 3,060 despite the numbers being arrested increasing. This was due to a number of legal challenges to the drink driving laws, resulting in a large volume of cases being deferred.
Minister Cullen described the incessant challenges to road safety laws as "unacceptable". The Minister said the rate of arrests was clearly not being matched by convictions, and that there was "an issue there with the law, and I am sure the Minister for Justice will be looking at that."
Mr Cullen said, however, that any new drink-driving legislation would have to be "watertight" because it would inevitably face legal challenge. He said he wanted the new legislation to be able to stand up in the courts. "As soon as we have all the clearance on the legal aspects we'll bring it [random breath testing] into the Dail," he added.
The new legislation is also expected to include more severe penalties, particularly for habitual offenders. In order to avoid a repeat if the current series of legal challenges, motorists who do not challenge a prosecution are likely to be dealt with more leniently.
Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy said challenges to the High Court in relation to drivers had resulted in a backlog of a large number of cases. He also asked the public to assist gardaí in reporting motorists clearly under the influence of alcohol or driving recklessly this summer.
Commissioner Conroy said gardaí would be focusing on pub car-parks with marked and unmarked vehicles. "I am asking the public in the same way as any other situation. . . to come on board and try and make the roads safer than they are the moment. They are the eyes and ears." He asked members of the public to use confidential hotlines. He said information received would be acted on.
The Commissioner also said the number of motorists being detected for drink driving was increasing, despite expectations to the contrary.
Eddie Shaw, chairman of the National Safety Council said the last time there were 40 road deaths in a single month, as in May 2005, was in Jury 2002. Asked about the rollout of the targets in the Road Safety Strategy 2004 to 2006, Mr Shaw said the absence of a specific budget for road safety was a "critical failure in the process".
"The Road Safety Strategy document, the policy adopted by Government has got no matching budget. There is no road safety budget. The budget only exists in the different votes of the different departments in the different activities in which they are engaged.
"Up to the formation of the Traffic Corps the gardaí had no road safety budget - it was just part of the overall vote to the gardaí that passed through Justice.
"That is a critical item. It means that within the structure of the way the Cabinet works, that there is no review process that looks at road safety as a policy in terms of its budget, its budget allocation and its success or failure in relation to its budget allocation," he said.
