Anyone caught driving while under the influence of alcohol should be charged with ‘attempted murder’.
This was the strong view voiced by the chairman of the city’s latest Joint Policing Committee (JPC), which heard that the number of drink driving incidents in the city is increasing.
Galway City Councillor Mike Cubbard (Ind) said the rise in drink driving incidents in the city and Salthill was “disgusting”.
He said there was no excuse for drink driving in the city, and added: “Anyone that takes a drink and gets behind the wheel of a car should be charged with attempted murder.”
Cllr Cubbard said that there should be zero tolerance of driving while drunk, not just at Christmas, but throughout the year.
Chief Superintendent Tom Curley told the JPC that the number of drunk drivers detected in the 10 months to the end of October of 2015 has increased by 8% compared with last year.
He said there were 137 people detected driving over the limit in the city and Salthill between January and the beginning of November, and that represented 10 more than the same period last year.
“Even in the last three days, we have detected eight drink drivers. It is still a serious issue,” said Chief Supt Curley.
He said that some 7,105 breath tests were carried out over that 10-month period at 939 MAT (Mandatory Alcohol Test) checkpoints that Gardaí set up on roads in the city since January.
Community representative on the JPC, Simon Comer, told the meeting that research would suggest the prevalence of drink driving in Galway is higher than the Garda statistics would suggest.
Mr Comer pointed to a survey by the Road Safety Authority in which 10% of respondents admitted to drink driving in the previous 12 months.
Assuming the figures were correct, and applying them to Galway, Mr Comer said that there could be as many as 2,800 people who drove while under the influence of alcohol in the past year.
Tommy Flaherty, another community representative on the JPC, said reports that a driver was caught over the limit at 12 noon on Sunday was “startling”. Coming into the Christmas party season, people should be made aware that if they consume to excess they may be still drunk ‘the morning after the night before’.
Chief Supt Curley said that there were no “hard luck stories” and from what he was hearing back from Gardaí on the ground was that the alcohol reading of those getting caught was extremely high and was the result of consuming huge volumes of alcohol.
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