Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I come from and live in rural Ireland. I can remember as a young woman going to the local pubs with my friends and seeing people who were very heavily intoxicated get behind the wheel of a car. As stated by Deputy Canney, this was the norm at that time. I can also remember very distressed people, wives, girlfriends and so on, trying to take keys from heavily intoxicated men because they did not want them to drive owing to the amount of alcohol in their systems. We now have evidence that alcohol is a psychoactive drug. It impairs a person's cognitive ability, vision and decision-making. Over the last number of years we have been putting in place legislation on the level of alcohol a person may have in his or her system while driving a vehicle, be that a motorbike, a car or bicycle. We have a great deal of evidence on the impact of alcohol on our systems, which I accept is different depending on sex, weight, height and whether or not a person has eaten.

Reference was made to people living in fear of not being able to drive the morning after an evening on which they have had a couple of drinks. My understanding is that it takes at least an hour to process one unit of alcohol such that if people go out for a meal and they have only a couple of units of alcohol they would not have too much to worry about the next morning. We need to be careful that we do not scare people into not going out and so on. I referred to my own experience as a young woman, what I have seen and the changes that have come into effect over the years. There is a generation of young people who would not dream of driving a car with any alcohol in their system. I know young people who live near me who would have a designated driver or they would get a lift to the local town and then get a taxi home.

Drinking and driving does not enter into their consciousness at all. However, there are other people who do and, sadly, the evidence, which is what all the legislation we produce in here must be-----

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