Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank both parties for their thoughtful presentations. It is very helpful to our work in ensuring we resolve most of the issues in the development of the legislation at the pre-publication stage rather than through amendments later.

One of the most significant issues that has bedevilled drink-driving laws for many years is challenges in the courts as to how a garda formed the opinion that someone had consumed alcohol. People were able to successfully challenge this for decades. The difficulty I have with the impairment notion is that it is subjective, to some extent, unless there is a capacity to measure. The delegation spoke about the need to provide for that in secondary legislation, and concerns that it not be seen to be prurient in nature, a concern which I share, and used for other evidential purposes rather than just saving lives on the roads. Is it possible to have a methodology in place that measures the concentration of the intoxicant or the impairment by virtue of the quantity of the drug in the system? We have a model for alcohol consumption. There are some who might argue that even if they are above the limit, they might not be impaired to the extent that someone else might be. My concern is that impairment will go back to the old debate about alcohol intoxication. Is it possible to measure definitively the concentration of a drug and its impairment on some scale which would stand the test of the battery of legal eagles that will ensue?