Pressure on hospital emergency departments: Drunk tanks call

Cork’s senator Jerry Buttimer is spot on when he says that staff at hard-pressed, hospital emergency departments shouldn’t have to spend time on so-called patients who are there not as a consequence of an accident or an emergency, but simply as a consequence of having drunk far too much alcohol.

His solution — drunk tanks in Garda stations — while having a surface attraction is, unfortunately, not obvious. The gardaí have pointed to legal difficulties around police powers: The unclear, but discrete definitions of “drunk” and “intoxicated” in legislation, principally the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act 1994, the Licensing (Ireland) Act, 1874 and even the European Convention on Human Rights.

How could a garda be expected to know if someone who is, or appears to be, intoxicated has an underlying or additional medical condition that needs emergency intervention from trained medical staff? Some conditions can seem to be intoxication when they might, in fact, be a symptom of diabetes. Drunk tanks — another name for police cells — might not be the answer.