Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We have all laboured the issue of enforcement. It does not matter what the penalty is if there is no prospect of being caught. Part of the problem is that people will take the risk because the prospect of being caught is minimal. I accept that breath-testing is not confined to the traffic corps. Like Deputy Ó Cuív, I have only once ever been randomly breath-tested. It happened on Victoria Quay in Dublin. Even the spread of testing appears to be disproportionate. What will it be like with 600 odd over the whole country?

We have something in theory but it needs to be there practice. If what we had was even enforced, that would certainly improve matters dramatically. It is important that we come back to this issue with some reassurances. I realise that much of it crosses over to the Department of Justice and Equality. The reality is, however, that the remit in this case is road safety. We need to be assured that whatever we are doing, we are not doing it in theory but in practice.