HOW very interesting to learn that - well, according to Nora Owen, anyway - the Garda authorities had been told March 10th that gardai could in law use "stinger" car immobilisers, though after last weekend's appalling double killing "by car thieves in Cork, gardai both there and in headquarters in Dublin said the law did not permit them to use such a device.
Well, these little misunderstandings happen to the best organised of forces. The question is, which Garda authority was so informed?
Was it, say, the Garda authority which was informed of the invasion of English National, Front fascists two years ago, and which improvised a brilliant response to that invasion by virtually withdrawing all gardai from the path of the visiting hooligans, who accordingly had Lansdowne Road to themselves apart, that is, from a squad or two of trainee gardai?
Was it the Garda authority which, when warned of a forthcoming raid on Brinks Allied security firm in north Dublin, responded by formulating a plan which resulted in the criminals getting away with the biggest cash haul in the history of the State? Was it . .. oh, fill in the gap yourselves.
The deaths of those two young men in Cork cannot be held at the door of the Gardai, to be sure, but they concealed a dreadful slaughter last weekend which has merited little or no attention. Twelve people were killed in accidents over the holiday period, and the one overwhelming feature of those terrible figures is the role of young males in those accidents.
Tragic ends
Three of the dead were pedestrians - one child, one elderly person and one man in his 30s. I know nothing of the ages of the drivers involved, nor who was at fault, nor indeed, who was drinking, if anybody was. My shrewd suspicion is that the drivers were probably young males. Three of the dead of last weekend were young male motorcyclists.
Two of the dead were young male drivers. One of the dead was a man in early middleage. And then we had the deaths of the two young men in Cork. Assuming that the culprit there was not a Church of Ireland vicareen who had got at the communion wine, that double killing was almost certainly the work of young males.
Now what civil liberties are at issue here, if the rights of young males to drive are severely curtailed? Might not young males be obliged to pass a particularly stringent test before being given, licences? Might they not be banned from consuming any alcohol whatsoever before driving? Might they not be restricted to a 40 m.p.h. speed limit on all roads? We could be sure at that at least half a dozen people from last weekend's harvest of slaughter would be alive today if that were the case. Though it is not possible to have motor traffic without some road casualties, it clearly is possible to reduce deaths by ardent Garda action, especially targeted at young males, who are our prime killers.
Out of control
Whoever and whatever is responsible individually for our appalling road deaths, they are rocketing out of control. The era of the tough drink driving laws has seen an increase in road deaths - up 19 last year to 456. Even aside from the mad endocrinal urges of young males which enable them to storm trenches - and also cause unconscionable numbers of deaths on the road - we can be sure that it is a major policing failure which has permitted this to happen.
We know that road blocks are a largely seasonal affair, yet Christmas is a time of relatively low road accidents - 37 people died last December, compared to 54 in September. No doubt that is due in part to the intense Garda activity over that period but that activity is paid for in overtime which cannot be paid for in months like September.
A death in September is not preferable to one in December, no matter how much we like to have our festivities unmixed with funerals.
Our road deaths toll has gone from 404 to 437 to 456 - its, growth exceeds that of our much vaunted economy. We no doubt like to console ourselves with the suggestion that our, road deaths make us the fifth lowest country for fatal accidents in Europe.
That is a misleading figure. That table is based on fatalities per 100,000 of national population, but proportionately we have far fewer cars than most countries. British road deaths, for example, total 3,621 which is eight times the Irish figure.
Leaving aside the fact that the British population is 15 times the Irish, the horror of Irish road deaths is better revealed by the numbers of vehicles on our respective roads.
The British have nearly 24 million motor vehicles and, motor cycles on their roads: we have a total 1.1 million of all vehicles (minus buses). That is we have 1/20th the number of vehicles that the British have. In other words, our killing rate per vehicle is 21/2 times that of our island neighbours and as for the North, the death rates there are falling down eight per cent to 144. We have twice their population, but we kill three times as many on our roads.
Absence of outcry
The amazing thing about all this is the utter absence of outcry about this slaughter. Less amazing is the silence on the issue of young males and their responsibility for this slaughter for we are bound by the insane feminist heresy of egalitarianism from legally acknowledging the behavioural differences between men and women. For if we distinguish between them on the roads, might we not be obliged to recognise, in law, the differences between them in other eras, and not always to the woman's advantage?
Meanwhile what is that sound we hear? It is the sound of members of the Garda Siochana, led by their leaders, marching for more money. No doubt they deserve it, as much as we deserve a proper and effective Garda force. Ten years ago we got the SKC report on the Garda Siochana. This year, we got Deloitte & Touche. Whose report will we get in 2007? In our heart of hearts, we know we'll still get the same force, probably, and for the report, the same bin certainly.