Number of people speeding and driving under influence 'very disappointing', superintendent says
Vivienne Clarke
The Garda Press Office has described the numbers of drivers driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs over the bank holiday as “very disappointing”.
Superintendent Liam Geraghty told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that while they were awaiting the final figures, already it was clear that there had been in excess of 200 arrests over the last seven days for such offences.
This was “really disappointing considering the volume of media commentary, public commentary that is going on around safety on our roads, road deaths and road behaviour on our roads, even when there was an increased enforcement campaign, that people were still taking that risk top drive and that passengers were getting into cars with some of those individuals as well," he said.
Geraghty added that gardaí anticipated that over 5,000 people would have been detected speeding over the last seven days since the St Patrick’s holiday operation was announced at a road safety conference in Killarney.
“Again, that's disappointing. In 2025, on average, we would have been detecting about 500 people a day speeding, over the last weekend it has been in excess of 700 drivers every day speeding.
“When you look at some of those speeds, for example, 112 kilometres per hour in a 50 kilometre zone on the R183 in Monaghan, that's motorway speed limits being driven on a small urban road in a built-up area.”
It was a big concern that despite the announcement of additional garda checkpoints and additional enforcements, there was still “such a high volume of people” taking the chance of speeding and driving while under the influence, putting themselves and everybody else at risk on the roads.
"Six people died on our roads since we last started talking about this last Wednesday in Kerry at the Road Safety Conference," Geraghty said.
“There seems to be a disconnect somewhere between people who are using our roads and their own view. We will hear people saying that they agree about how terrible it is with what's going on our roads.
"But yes, I know the RSA in recent surveys will say that 12 per cent of Irish motorists will admit that they will drive while under the influence of alcohol, 25 percent or more believe that driving a short distance after drinking is still acceptable. But yet, then they call out saying it's terrible that people are dying on our roads.”
Geraghty defended the number of gardaí assigned to roads policing. There are now 647 persons full-time involved in roads policing.
“That is the highest speciality within An Garda Síochána, nearly double any other level of speciality involved in it. But roads policing is also very much supported by every uniform and plainclothes member of An Garda Síochána,.
“But the reality is, even if 14,500 members of An Garda Síochána were all out on our roads this morning, there will still be thousands of kilometres of roads where there won't be Gardaí visibility. And that's where personal responsibility of the driver comes into it, for them to drive safely, not just for themselves, but for passengers and other road users.”
