The case of Garda Shankey-Smith, who escaped a jail sentence for drink- driving and killing a pedestrian in Co Laois, is not the most lenient involving a member of the Garda Siochana in recent times.

Last May Rathfarnham District Court imposed a three-year driving ban and a £1,000 fine on a Dublin detective who knocked down and killed a cyclist on the Naas dual carriageway on December 21st last year.

The officer knocked down and killed Mr Gerard O'Neill (35), a single man who supported his elderly mother, then drove away leaving him on the hard shoulder of the carriageway.

After striking Mr O'Neill, Garda Michael Martin drove on and abandoned the unmarked Garda car he was driving illegally and went home, where he was arrested the following day. He was charged only with failing to stay at the scene of an accident. He was temporarily suspended from duty and has since returned to work.

Similarly, Garda Shankey-Smith was charged, not with dangerous driving causing death, but with driving with excess alcohol and failing to remain at the scene of an accident.

But the apparent leniency in the cases involving the two gardai is not out of the ordinary in that Irish courts, generally speaking, tend to treat such cases leniently.

In July a Dundalk man escaped with a suspended three-year sentence and a seven-year driving ban for killing a baby in a head-on crash. The man was drunk and was overtaking on the wrong side of the road when he struck an oncoming car, killing the baby.

In June Cork Circuit Criminal Court imposed a three-year sentence and disqualification on a 21-year-old man for dangerous driving causing serious bodily injury. The man was drunk when he hit a 30-year-old woman pharmacist who had to have her leg amputated. This sentence, however, is due for review on November 19th.

On March 12th, Clonmel Circuit Court imposed a three-year suspended sentence, although combined with a 20-year driving ban, on a 26-year-old Waterford man with a lengthy record of speeding and dangerous driving offences, for killing a Kilkenny man and seriously injuring his pregnant wife.

The court heard that Stephen Power, from Kilmeadan, was driving at 60 m.p.h. on the wrong side of the road when he crossed a hump-backed bridge and struck the oncoming car head-on.

He had five previous convictions for speeding and dangerous driving.

By contrast with Irish courts, courts in Britain and Northern Ireland have been imposing heavy jail sentences for similar cases.

On April 2nd an Old Bailey judge imposed a 12-year jail sentence on a 33-year-old Londoner who caused the deaths of a young couple by ramming their car off a road.

A Northumberland man was jailed for seven years on March 9th for killing three pedestrians while driving when drunk.

In August the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, appealed for stronger sanctions against dangerous and drunken drivers, suggesting that there should be a total ban on alcohol consumption by drivers, saying there was a need to emphasise the "criminal aspect of drinking and driving".