Gardaí report 41% rise in driving under the influence

DRINK driving arrests in Cork city are set to break last year’s record within the next few days, according to gardaí who have seen a staggering 41% increase in detections since the introduction of mandatory breath testing.

Inspector Pat Lehane of the Cork city traffic corps confirmed yesterday that there had been 776 arrests so far this year on suspicion of driving while under the influence, compared with 615 for the same period last year. That is an increase of 26%.

In 2005, there were 807 arrests, which means with the average daily and weekend haul, that figure will be surpassed within days — and there’s still more than two months to year’s end.