Big rise in numbers on drink-driving charges

A substantial increase in the numbers appearing before the courts on drink-driving and dangerous driving charges is disclosed in official figures released today.

Published by the Courts Service, the figures also show the vast majority of people charged with drink-driving were convicted but avoided a jail sentence when they appeared in the district courts last year.

The figures demonstrate a significant rise in the numbers dealt with by the courts in 2006 in three major areas of traffic crime - drink-driving, dangerous driving and stealing cars.

The Road Safety Authority (RSA) said the figures showed increased enforcement action to deter these "killer offences" and also demonstrated that offenders would be speedily processed by the courts.

An RSA spokesman said that while the authority was disappointed that such high numbers of people were involved in the offences, the figures also clearly showed offenders were at much greater risk of being caught, particularly following the introduction of random breath-testing.

Fine Gael road safety spokesman Shane McEntee said tougher penalties are necessary if we are to be serious about road safety. There must be breath-testing at the scene of every accident, he urged. "The bottom line is that the number of drink-driving convictions is still on the increase."

There was a 79 per cent rise in drink-driving cases dealt with by the district courts, today's figures reveal. A total of 27,836 people came before district judges last year compared with 15,540 in 2005.

Just 804 of the 27,836 received a prison term or, in juvenile cases, a detention sentence.

Some 2,500 cases were either struck out, dismissed or withdrawn.

In dangerous driving cases, only 730 of the total of 6,721 cases - a 51 per cent rise on the 2005 figure of 4,448 - resulted in prison or detention. The preferred sanctions were fines (1,239) and disqualification (1,199). More than 1,800 cases were either struck out, dismissed (301) or withdrawn.

In cases of stealing cars, jail or detention was more likely. The number of such cases rose last year by 27 per cent to 2,254, with almost 600 offenders either jailed or detained.

About 400 were fined and/or disqualified, while some 500 were either struck out, dismissed or withdrawn.

The statistics show that the district courts dealt with 222,376 road traffic cases in 2006, up 12 per cent on the previous year.

A spokesman stressed that the figure relates only to cases completed in 2006 and not to Garda figures for those charged with road traffic offences last year.

The introduction of random breath-testing and the automatic prosecution of people via fixed penalty charges contributed to the increase in cases, a spokesman said.

The increase was also due to the fact there were 1,000 extra district court sittings last year and special summer sittings in Dublin for drink-driving cases.

In a separate development yesterday, the Automobile Association (AA) urged the Government to deal with the "growing problem" of foreign national drivers evading the penalty points system here.

The AA has proposed the creation of a "parallel record" of foreign national drivers' behaviour in Ireland, to which record penalty points would be applied.

"There is a major gap in Irish law at the moment, and the situation is worsening," said AA public affairs manager Conor Faughnan.

Figures last week showed that almost 440,000 drivers have received points since their introduction in 2002 but, because 108,000 of these drivers do not hold an Irish driving licence, the points cannot be applied.

Having a large group of the driving population immune from penalty points was "an unacceptable situation", Mr Faughnan said.