Drink-driving: If your chance of being caught is 1 in 77, where is the deterrent? |
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ALCOHOL ACTION IRELAND appeared before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport this week to make the case for urgent action on drink-driving. It was not the first time it has done so.
While committees sit and ministers nod, the numbers keep getting worse.
183 people were killed on Irish roads in 2025.
That is the highest toll since 2014, and a 39% increase in just three years. According to An Garda Síochána, 59 people have been killed so far in 2026 (as of 14 May) — the same figure as at this point last year. In a year when we should be seeing improvement, we are running level with one of the worst years in over a decade.
We know alcohol is a central factor.
The RSA’s own coronial data shows that 35% of drivers killed between 2016 and 2020 had alcohol in their systems.
At night, between 10pm and 6am, that figure is 70%. They are the RSA’s own numbers. And yet our response to them has been, by any objective measure, to do less.
In 2010, there were 2.65 million driving licences in Ireland. Gardaí carried out 566,760 roadside breath tests that year and made 10,308 arrests.
In 2025, there were 3.54 million licences, nearly a million more people with access to the roads. Breath tests had fallen to 189,736. Arrests to 4,867.
More drivers. Two thirds fewer tests. Half the arrests.
Gardaí pointed to a 5% increase in drink-driving detections last year as evidence of progress. A 5% increase on a baseline that has collapsed by two-thirds in 15 years is not a meaningful trend. It is a footnote.
If you drink drive in Ireland tonight, according to Alcohol Action Ireland your chance of being caught is approximately 1.3%, or 1 in 77. For context, CSO survey data suggests that 2.6% of adults were involved in a road traffic collision in the previous 12 months — roughly 1 in 38 people.
In other words, Irish adults may now be statistically more likely to be involved........