The Government was yesterday condemned by the largest doctors' union in the State for failing to take action to reduce the number of deaths on our roads.
Delegates at the annual conference of the Irish Medical Organisation in Killarney also castigated the Government for failing to implement policies aimed at curbing alcohol abuse.
The conference heard that 374 people were killed on the roads in 2004, 399 died last year and well over 100 have been killed so far this year.
"So we really have a crisis in this country," Dr Declan Bedford, a public health specialist, told the conference.
He said 96 per cent of crashes were due to driver behaviour. "And sometimes you would wonder whether we actually have a conspiracy here to kill ourselves. We drink and drive . . . we speed far too much," he said, adding that he couldn't understand why some drivers flashed their lights at oncoming vehicles to warn of speed checks ahead.
He added that between 30 and 40 per cent of deaths on our roads were alcohol-related and the majority occurred at night-time, between 10pm and 4am. Random breath-testing was essential, he argued.
Dr Fenton Howell, also a public health specialist, said there was a lot of talk about road quality, engineering and what a better education of drivers would do.
But, he said, education had "minor value compared to proper enforcement of legislation and I think that is where our Government has fallen down very, very badly".
He also said newspapers, when printing stories about road crashes, should state whether victims were wearing seat-belts, were speeding or had been drinking. People needed to be told the full story, he said.
Dr Ciarán O'Donovan, a GP from Cork city, said just as tax defaulters are named and shamed in newspapers, so too should drivers when they lost their driving licences. "It would soon work," he said.
Meanwhile, delegates adopted motions calling for a 50 per cent increase in the price of all alcoholic spirits and a €2 increase in the cost of cigarettes in the next budget, saying price was a huge factor in deterring young people from drinking and smoking.
The Drinks Industry Group of Ireland, in a statement issued later, strongly rejected the IMO's proposal to dramatically increase the level of taxation on spirits.
Dr Siobhán Barry, a consultant psychiatrist, said there was little doubt that alcohol played a pivotal role in young male suicides. There had been a 41 per cent increase in alcohol consumption over the past 10 years and a 44 per cent increase in suicides over the same period, she said.
Dr Bedford said the national alcohol task force had called for legislation to reduce exposure of children to alcohol advertising but instead the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, had succumbed to pressure from the drinks industry and opted for a voluntary code of practice.
Ms Harney is not attending this year's event as it clashes with her own party conference which takes place this weekend in Limerick.
Meanwhile, the outgoing president of the IMO, Dr Asam Ishtiaq, said patients due to be admitted to hospital for planned surgery are now having their operations cancelled every day of the week.
Operations were being cancelled to make way for patients from overcrowded A&E departments, he said, adding that the fundamental problem was lack of acute bed capacity.