Deputy Danny Healy Rae is in a state of genuine disbelief at the proposals of his fellow Independent TD, Minister Shane Ross’s zero tolerance rate of alcohol consumption for drivers.
Deputy Healy Rae is not alone by no means. There are many people in rural areas with no other means of making human contact than by a daily / nightly / weekly trip to their local public house.
Laughter the Best Medicine
If laughter is the great medicine as is often claimed in learned journals, it is dispensed free of charge in these wonderful dens of iniquity throughout rural Ireland.
The dark side of it all is that the laughter can be soon forgotten as rural roads are now marked with increasing frequency by crosses and monuments to people killed in accidents.
Not all of these can be blamed on alcohol consumption as there is an increasing prevalence of people driving under the influence of drugs.
But the focus of road safety remains firmly fixed on the man with the whiff of a few guilty glasses of stout off him.
Town and Villages
Public houses in small towns and villages around the country are barely hanging in there and Minister Ross and his new ideas will spell the end for many more of them.
Deputy Danny has a vested interest in this area as a publican and he has a way with words. But he puts things in the kind of perspective which people in rural Ireland can relate to.
Against Zero Tolerance
Altar wine and cough bottles are rarely found on the same page of anyone’s book, but Danny draws them in to make his argument against zero tolerance and its vagaries.
Zero tolerance of alcohol levels with zero care or plan for how people can get from pub to home in safety is another reason for the increase in pedestrian deaths on rural roads.
It’s blowing up the very last bridge on the loneliness relief road and its consequences would go unnoticed but for the emergence of rip.ie and its social media equals.
Deputy Danny Healy Rae issued a statement today in which he outlines his opposition to the zero tolerance campaign:
Another attack on Rural Ireland and the Catholic Church
The current campaign being pushed by Minister Ross to change the legislation with regards to the permitted blood alcohol levels in drivers appears not to be looked for by any other body, not even the Road Safety Authority (RSA).
If zero tolerance was enforced this would mean that a priest would be breaking the law if he drives home after mass once he has received the blood of Christ (wine) in the course of saying mass.
This would also mean that people taking certain medicines, e.g. some cough bottles, could be deemed unfit to drive depending on the person’s consumption and when they took their medicine. They could suffer disqualification under this proposed legislation. Regards, Danny Healy Rae.
Click on the link here to see what Minister Ross is about to make law:
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