Ms Moyagh Murdock:

On whether we originally raised this issue with the Minister, we should go back to 2011 when we reduced the level of blood alcohol from 80 mg to 50 mg. At that point, the Road Safety Authority supported outright disqualification at the lower level. I will be straight up and say there was significant resistance to that proposal. I forget the name of the Minister who was in charge as it was before my time. However, we faced significant resistance in having the measure passed at the time. A trade-off was made and an administrative fine introduced at the lower levels of blood alcohol. This was done to get the Bill through in some shape or form. Before the current Minister's tenure, it was the objective of the Road Safety Authority to lower the level to 50 mg outright and have a mandatory ban across the board. However, we have to be practical. A start was made. When he took office, the Minister saw the devastation caused by drink driving, in particular, the big increase in the number of road traffic casualties in 2016.

The Minister decided to move forward with an amendment to the current Bill, to revert back and say that this is obviously not working and we need to change this to a mandatory ban rather than an administrative fine. That is some of the background. When this was talked about in the past, it was our objective and we made recommendations but one has to be practical when it comes to legislation. It was saving some lives but it could go further and save more. That is why we are here today and what the pre-scrutiny is about.

We have a lot more research to hand now. In 2011 we did not have the in-depth study and the case would not have been as compelling. Prior to the pre-crash survey, there was a perception that 15% of crashes were alcohol related, significantly less than what we have now proved. The impetus may not have been there to do it. We now have unequivocal evidence and it continues on from the research we are rolling out from 2013 to 2015, inclusive. That is where we are today.

On the work we do with An Garda Síochána, we fully accept Garda resources have been depleted over recent years. However, we are trying to work with An Garda Síochána from the files we have analysed to see the critical times of the day, the days of the week, the locations, the counties and the propensity of people drinking and driving, so that it can have more strategic Garda enforcement. It has continuous programmes, especially over bank holiday weekends and holiday periods. It has Operation Lockdown and Surround where it surrounds a town and makes sure all roads in and out are manned. In recent times, there has been much anecdotal evidence that there has been a much more visible presence of An Garda Síochána. We fully accept that effective enforcement is required hand-in-hand with legislation but the legislation, the deterrent, has to be in force in the first place.

That is some of the work we are doing. Ms Burns's team of researchers will go through the forensic files and the collision files to continue the work we have already done. The Garda has two statisticians who work with our people to try to ensure we get the most comprehensive information. We are receiving much more information from the Garda on seat-belt wearing, mobile phone use and licence classification, that is, whether they are unaccompanied learners or learner drivers, so we can try to identify the underlying causes of the crashes on our roads much more quickly. The work going on is quite comprehensive.