In the last Head To Head, Susan Grayand Pádraig Cribbendebated the question: "Should the permitted level of blood alcohol for drivers be lowered?" Here is an edited selection of your comments
YES: 35% NO: 65%
I SELDOM take a drink. However, when I go out for a meal, I enjoy a glass of wine. It would not be fair if I were to fail a breathalyser test on my return home. Also, I disagree that the deaths on our roads are due to drink-driving. I personally think road accidents are caused by lack of concentration and carelessness.
Joan Keegan Ireland
If you enjoy a glass of wine that is fine. If you have a glass of wine and drive home and hit me, I hope you are well insured. Never drink and drive.
Con Clery Ireland
As a rural dweller and a publican I can assure you that 99 per cent of our younger customers will not drink and drive and, because they generally only drink at the weekends and tend to socialise in groups, it is easy for them to organise taxis, lifts etc. However, for our older customers, whose drinking patterns are different, it is not so easy. We have many older customers whose only social activity is a trip to the local, where 99 per cent of them drink within the existing drink-driving limits.
These rural people are being discriminated against because they do not have the same social opportunities and transport infrastructure as their urban counterparts.
John Buckley Ireland
Drinking and driving don't mix. Either drink or drive but never together. We have to have zero tolerance.
Orla Mc Laughlin Ireland
An adult who drinks a glass of wine with a meal should not be criminalised. It's not the people slightly over the limit that we read about in papers, it's the ones who are five and six times over the legal limit.
G Kinsella Ireland
Anyone who drinks one pint is in fact drinking two units of alcohol, even though they may consider it just one drink.
Pádraig Cribben is just trying to engage the sympathies of his consumer clientele group. Would he be of the same opinion if the pilot of a plane on which he was a passenger had consumed any alcohol, even though there is a co-pilot and a system of auto-piloting on planes?
Michele Savage Ireland
Beware the law of unintended consequences, where steps to apparently solve one problem lead in effect to much worse . . . Reduction will lead to huge numbers of people sitting isolated at home drinking.
James Meyler Ireland
Reducing the blood level amount to zero removes any ambiguity as to whether you can drink and drive. It should be a black-and-white issue.
Ray H Ireland
I spent 31 years working full time in the emergency services and I attended some horrific accidents. My last 10 years in service were spent in particular on road-traffic accidents. Some accidents were caused by drunk drivers well over the limit but not by a person after one or two pints.
I drank and drove (carefully) all my life and never had an accident with drink taken. I've had three minor accidents when sober and each time I had taken my eye off the road - yet you never hear any of the campaigns saying don't take your eye off the road.
Paul Keane Ireland
I get a taxi home from the pub. It is not fair of others to put my life and the lives of other citizens in danger by drinking and driving.
I am doing my best to preserve the life and health of others. I expect others to do likewise. Drinking and driving is not acceptable in any part of Ireland, rural or otherwise.
Liam O Dowd Ireland