Sir, – There is more than a whiff of something unpleasant surrounding the coverage of Danny Healy Rae’s drink driving proposals.This odour may be the scent of urbanite hypocrisy and a failure to see that the proposal exhibits two principles which are much-vaunted by the educated middle-classes (which the media and much of the Government generally comprises), namely joined-up thinking and liberalism. However, in relation to joined-up thinking, Mr Healy-Rae did not go far enough.
Mr Healy-Rae is a publican and wants to encourage access to drinking alcohol in pubs for those in rural areas. As someone who has implemented road works for Kerry County Council in the past , he should also have suggested that he could widen the roads in order to give more latitude to these drinkers as they meander, mildly intoxicated, down the boreens.
In relation to permitting people to break the law in defined circumstances, the potential here is obvious in a wide range of areas and would allow for more creative bespoke implementation of the law.
For example, students could be allowed to smoke cannabis on the assumption that they will grow out of it, only Polish people could be allowed to burn Polish coal in urban areas on the basis that there’s a nice symmetry there and councillors could be permitted on occasion to come up with daft embarrassing ideas on the basis that they get worldwide coverage and in the year of The Gathering this helps to reinforce “Oirish” stereotypes which may contribute to revenue generation. – Yours, etc,