Irish council votes to legalise drink driving

Guinness. Photo / Thinkstock

Councillors in rural Ireland have come up with a novel way of tackling the problem of drink-driving - make it legal.

The plans, backed by Kerry county council in south-west Ireland, would allow police to issue permits that exempt some people from drink-driving limits.

Councillor Danny Healy-Rae, who proposed the motion, said the new rules should apply to older people who live in isolated areas.

He argued that current laws regulating drink-driving were forcing an older generation to stay home.

"All the wisdom, and all the wit and all the culture that they had, the music and the singing - that's all being lost to the younger generation because these older people might as well be living in Japan and Jerusalem," he told the Journal.ie. website

He added: "I see the merit in having a stricter rule of law for when there's a massive volume of traffic. But on the roads I'm talking about, you couldn't do any more than 20 or 30 miles per hour, and it's not a big deal."

The motion was passed at the end of a long meeting when 12 councillors were absent.

The council will now call on the Irish Justice Department to implement the change, but it is unlikely that the council will be able to force a change in the law.

The idea was branded unthinkable by road safety campaigners and the Mayor of Kerry, Terry O'Brien, called it incredibly dangerous.

A number of councillors who approved the measure, including Mr Healy-Rae, are pub owners, and as such could benefit from the rule-change.

Healy-Rae denied that this had influenced the vote.

- Independent