Gardaí claim drink driving clampdown success

SENIOR gardaí have claimed a crackdown on drink driving this year has resulted in an 18% increase in the number of people arrested on suspicion of driving over the legal limit.

Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy said 3,395 people were detected for suspected drink driving in the first three months of 2006, compared to 2,883 during the same period last year. Over 14,400 motorists have also been issued with fines for speeding since the extension of the penalty points system in early April. A further 1,895 people were caught driving without a seat belt.

Addressing the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport yesterday, Mr Conroy said gardaí were no longer merely cautioning people for the non-wearing of seat belts.

The Garda Traffic Corps has been bolstered by a further 60 officers since March with a similar number to be added each quarter in 2006 to bring the total to 805 by the end of the year. Twenty-eight new garda vehicles, including eight unmarked cars have been added to the fleet in recent weeks.

Mr Conroy said up to four patrol cars could be written off in a single night due to ramming incidents in cities, although the situation had improved in recent years.

Questioned by Independent TD Michael Lowry about the general condition of garda cars, Mr Conroy said he had an annual budget of €14 million for new vehicles.

Mr Lowry said he had recently seen two garda cars which had 148,000km and 126,000km on the clock respectively. However, Mr Conroy said modern cars with high mileage were perfectly safe so long as they were serviced regularly.

Mr Conroy told TDs and senators that targeted road safety enforcement operations would remain ongoing across all garda divisions to reduce the number of fatal and serious injury collisions.

Between now and the end of June, special checkpoints will also be mounted to inspect heavy goods vehicles and drink drivers.

Mr Conroy said there would also be additional traffic policing programmes similar to a two-day operation in force yesterday and today which will focus on tackling motorists engaged in dangerous driving.

The commissioner said garda units were selecting locations for such operations based on information about accident blackspots. At least one marked garda vehicle will patrol an 8km stretch of national road between 7.30am and 10am and between 4pm and 7pm on each day of operation.

So far this year, a total of 152 people have been killed on roads in the Republic, compared to 133 over the same period in 2005.

The latest death was a 79-year-old female pedestrian who was fatally injured when she was struck by an articulated lorry as she crossed the North Circular Road in Dublin at around 12.40pm. She was pronounced dead a short time later at the nearby Mater Hospital.