Madam, – It is unfortunate that the Healy Raes of South Kerry have become the public face and spokesmen for rural Ireland regarding the proposed lowering of the alcohol levels for drivers (Weekend Review, October 31st), as they provide light relief for urban-based commentators while letting the Government parties keep a low profile.
They also give free rein to the the Minister for Transport (with a designated driver for many-a-year now) to drive a further nail into the coffin of rural life as we know it and the rural pub.
For many years, this same rural pub has been the mainstay of Bord Fáilte/Fáilte Ireland in selling holidays in Ireland with pubs full of people, complete with pints of the black stuff and traditional music.
But Fianna Fáil has made it its business to wipe all that out when we include Micheál Martin’s draconian smoking ban.
It is unfortunate also that sneering commentators will latch onto such statements as “bachelor farmers coming down from the hills, driving to the pub”, adding “while ignoring widows, single parents and disabled people”. Whereas it is a fact that all of the above have relied on the rural pub as the centre for their local social life – be that politically correct or not – and are paying the same price as the “bachelor farmers” while, at the same time, the pub is acknowledged as the centre of the community and used by many rural politicians for their local clinics.
Statistics must be available somewhere to show that most, if not all, weekend late-night and early-hours’ road carnage incidents are of urban origin. That is to say, individuals who have been responsible for alcohol-related accidents departed an urban scene, driving over the legal limit (or even below it), rather than the individual driving home on a country road from his or her local pub. And this is the issue: the rural population is being made to pay for, and are most affected by, the irresponsible behaviour of young late-night drinkers driving home from night clubs in the country’s urban centres.
That distinction must be made, acknowledged and legislated for accordingly. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Would that the impending legislation to adjust the drink-drive alcohol limit should also make provision for both a zero-level of lobbying by industry and for the creation of an alcohol board. The current approach is to have many different departments address the fall-out from this drug, where and when it affects their particular brief.
Perhaps that board might then inform the EU that alcohol is in fact a drug, and have it re-classify the substance from a foodstuff, the howler of a misnomer behind which the alcoholic beverage industry has been allowed to officially hide for so long. – Yours, etc,