Danny Healy-Rae’s Co Kerry ‘drunk driving’ legislation slammed as 'ridiculous'

New Healy-Rae legislation looks to permit driving after a few pints in rural areas

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KERRY O'SHEA,

IrishCentral Staff Writer

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Danny Healy-Rae at his family pub in Kilgarvan, Co Kerry

Photo by Dan Linehan

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The Kerry County Councillor did acknowledge that his legislation that wouldn’t be suitable for the entire country: “A blanket rule for the country will not work. You can’t paint the whole country with the one brush and hope that everything works out.”

Behind the new legislation is Healy-Rae’s growing concern about the mental health of those who are forced to be isolated in their rural homes: “These people that are being isolated at present, all the wisdom and all the wit and all the culture that they had, the music and the singing, that’s all being lost to the younger generation because these older people might as well be living in Japan and Jerusalem because the younger generation don’t see them at all anymore.”

“These characters are being isolated now at home, and a lot of them falling into depression.” Healy-Rae asserts that being permitted to drive after having a reasonable amount of alcohol would help draw these isolated people out from their homes, in hopes of reviving a dying or reclusive generation.

Healy-Rae was cognizant that there will be opposition to his ideas: “I know there’ll be opposition. I know that it will be people in urban areas who have access to different outlets than the pub, but in rural parishes, that’s well we have – we don’t have anything else. All they want to do [here] is talk to neighbours, talk to friends, play cards, talk about the match and the price of cattle, about such a lady going out with such a fella, and it’s harmless.”

Indeed, the criticism has been laid on hard.

Noel Brett, chief executive of the Road Safety Authority in Ireland, was particularly critical of the Healy-Rae motion: "It is unthinkable that we would go back to a system that sought to increase our drink-drive limit.”

“We have made substantial progress in Ireland in reducing deaths and injuries on our roads, particularly in rural areas which are hardest hit by road fatalities and injuries."

Co Kerry Mayor Terry O’Brien also said to RTE that Healy-Rae’s motion is “incredibly dangerous. I don't know how anybody can be allowed to say: 'You've had two pints, so you're justified to drive.’”

“I don't know what expertise one would have to look at someone in a bar to give them a permit to drive a car after any alcohol.”

Kerry Councilor Gillian Wharton-Slattery refuted Healy-Rae’s  link between being stuck at home and suicide: "Depression causes suicide. It's not caused by not being able to go to the pub," Wharton-Slattery told the Guardian. 

Irish radio host Ray D’Arcy even hung up on the Kerry Councillor while speaking to him about the matter: “...You come up with harebrained ideas like this and waste everybody’s time. I have to say goodbye. This is my show. Good luck.”

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