DANNY HEALY-RAE’S FURY OVER BOOZE BUS
TD hits out at ‘drink link’ – and plans to sue Ross over ‘terrorist’ remark
DANNY Healy-Rae has dismissed Shane Ross’s plan for a rural ‘drink link’ bus service – and said he is ‘absolutely’ taking legal action against the Transport Minister for calling him a ‘road traffic terrorist’.
The Kerry TD said that a bus to bring patrons home from country pubs was nothing more than ‘deflection’ from Mr Ross’s disinterest in rural issues.
‘I believe this is only a deflection to cover up because they know what they are doing is wrong and they don’t want to allow [rural people] to have any social life whatsoever,’ he said.
Mr Healy-Rae is a pub owner in Kilgarvan, Co. Kerry, and has long been a critic of Mr Ross’s tough stance on drink driving, which he said is ruining the rural pub trade. Mr Ross’s latest project, to be unveiled this summer, is a Government-sponsored bus that would take people to and from rural pubs.
However, Independent TD Mr Healy-Rae said people would rather drink small amounts and drive home. ‘I honestly believe a pint and a half pint, or 80 milligrams... people driving in that bracket never caused, never would cause and never did cause a fatality,’ he said.
‘There’s so many other things to be done to address fatalities and to address accidents on the road, but the Minister or the Government don’t want to do it. The sad part about all this is this man doesn’t understand rural Ireland. He’s Dublin born and bred.’
Mr Healy-Rae’s brother Michael, also a TD, echoed his sibling’s views, saying that all the rural bus services being suggested for Ireland would not be enough to serve Kerry alone, and that the proposal was ‘nonsense’ and ‘a spin’ for media coverage.
‘This is a thing for the media... “Look, I’m hitting rural Ireland, but I’m helping rural Ireland”,’ Michael Healy-Rae said.
He added that any Fine Gael TDs who backed the move would be letting down the people who elected them. ‘Any one of them who will vote for this, they should never again be entertained in rural Ireland because they’re breaking a promise they gave to the people and that was that they would try to help rural Ireland,’ he said.
The scheme will operate on a trial basis from the summer until December on 50 routes across the country, encompassing Kerry, Cork, Donegal, Kildare, Waterford, Wexford, Cavan, Monaghan, Offaly and Laois.
Danny Healy-Rae also said that he would also be continuing legal action against Mr Ross for recent comments in which the Transport Minister referred to the Kerryman as a road ‘terrorist’ for his stand against drink-driving laws.
‘Goddamnit, I was never a terrorist and I get up every day to help – and what I’m trying to do is to help anyone and everyone that comes to me,’ he said.
‘We never hurt or harmed anyone – only to try to do our best for everyone regardless of where they were from or what political background they had. We set out and that’s what we tried to do – to help everyone. We never terrorised or blackguarded anyone. I’ve too much done... for people to take that from the likes of him.’
Mr Ross made the remarks after encountering resistance from rural TDs to legislation cracking down on drink driving in country areas. In response to the criticism, Mr Ross said that he was pleased with the ‘drink link’ scheme and added that it was being implemented as a pilot project. ‘This is designed to help Kerry and other areas of rural Ireland,’ he said.
THEY were sky-high platform sandals, with soles made of wood, and I loved them. Solid wood, though. That meant zero flexibility, minimal comfort, maximum blistering and aching potential. But they looked fantastic with a blue tiered gypsy skirt and a white off-the-shoulder top, especially accessorised with a smear of glittery blue eye-shadow that came free with Jackie magazine.
And they were just about bearable for the walk to the end of the village, after the disco ended, to the start of the twomile, pitch-dark road up to our home. But once I was safely out of sight I’d take them off and walk barefoot in the middle of the quiet road, where the tar was still warm from the day’s sunshine and there was less chance of the thorns and gravel you’d find by the ditches.
These days, I’d be wary of walking that road even in broad daylight. Cars fly up and down, skimming the hedgerows to pass one another, at all hours. Everyone drives now, of course, but the problem of getting home after a night out in a rural village hasn’t changed all that much since I was a teenager. The reasons may have changed – back then very few young people had cars, but those who did weren’t much bothered by drink-driving legislation – but farmhouses and one-off bungalows can still be a couple of miles or more from their nearest village. Walking an unlit country road late at night is a dangerous business now, even in summer, when oncoming motorists don’t have the hindrance of heavy rain or black ice. And driving certainly isn’t an option, especially given that the drink-driving laws are to be tightened further.
It might have happened anyway, but the life has been sapped out of rural villages over the past 20 years or so. The pub scene, where once you could be guaranteed a lively evening amongst friends and neighbours, is dying. When I was in my teens there were eight busy, hopping pubs in our village, and now there’s two.
There’s not much to appeal to youngsters in your average rural village, even if they were prepared to walk home in the dark. They might as well organise a lift to the nearest decent-sized town, and share the cost of a taxi home. And so the rural pubs as gathering places, as social lifelines, as venues for live music and card games and quiz nights, are hosting a smaller and older and quieter clientele.
And that’s why the newly announced rural bus scheme, to be piloted this summer, is at least worth a try. The HealyRaes, both fierce opponents of the tough new drink-driving laws, were first to scorn the planned rural bus service, and that alone should be enough to recommend it. They insist that it’s just a ‘political ploy’ and a ‘sop’ to those communities where the drink-driving laws will hit the hardalso est, but then they would, wouldn’t they? The last thing they want is a sensible and potentially effective Government initiative spiking their guns.
And before the usual naysayers join the chorus of whingeing, and decry the squandering of taxpayers’ money on ferrying drinkers to their nearest watering holes, it’s worth noting the comparatively modest cost of the scheme.
Community
It’s basically an extension of the existing LocalLink bus service, covering 50 routes across 19 counties. The drivers and the buses are already in place, so all it requires is an additional four-day service, running from 6pm to 11pm from Thursday to Sunday nights, and it will cost around €1.6million. In total, there will be 188 extra bus runs a week, bringing life and custom and footfall into rural towns and villages on summer weekend evenings. You can see how, if it’s embraced by these communities, the service could well pay for itself in no time.
And that’s before you factor in the human cost upon the financial one. Critics will say that it’s facilitating a dysfunctional national mindset that can’t contemplate an evening of socialising or entertainment without the presence of alcohol. And there’s no doubt that that’s a link we have forged over generations. But it’s also one that will take more than tough drink-driving laws to break.
And we also have a problem with drink driving. Almost 800 people are arrested for drink driving every month, and around one in ten motorists has driven with drink on board. Alcohol is a factor in more than one-third of road deaths here and, perhaps surprisingly, pedestrians with drink taken are more at risk than drunk drivers. Some 47% of pedestrians killed over an eight-year period had been drinking, compared to 38% of drivers fatally injured. So walking home from the pub is just about the most dangerous way to end an evening out.
And yet rural isolation is a problem we need to face. Discouraging lonely folk from drinking and driving home from the nearest pub won’t stop them drinking, it’ll just make them more likely to turn to the slab of supermarket beer to pass their empty evenings at home. We may not be able to socialise without drinking in this country but, alas, we’re well able to drink without socialising.
Counter-intuitively, a scheme that encourages people to get out early and get home early could well lead to less harmful drinking, not more. Pub measures are smaller and dearer than the drinks we pour at home, for a start, and if you’ve got to keep an eye on the time, you’re going to have to pace yourself. And leaving before 11pm avoids that lethal Irish habit of stocking up on shorts and pints as closing time approaches, as if the barman was about to announce Prohibition and not just last orders.
And if they knew that folk would be landing in the village at 6.30pm or 7pm of a Friday, small restaurants might stay open a little later and offer hot meals for people who might well have been eating alone all week. Shops might keep their doors open later, too, bringing a bit of a buzz back to small town centres. Families might even choose to take the Saturday evening bus into Mass and then stay around for a drink or a game of cards, a music session, or just a few hours of catching up on the news.
It’s easy for city dwellers, with their ready access to public transport, to begrudge the cost of a scheme like this, and to underestimate its positive potential for threatened rural communities. And it’ll definitely come under fire from politicians who find their own grandstanding as rural champions undermined by a cheap, effective and useful service that could make a difference to people’s lives. Softening our legislative approach to drink driving is not an option, considering that almost 800 drivers every month still think it’s worth their while taking a chance. But I suspect that, for all the guff they talk, the Healy-Reas are right on one point: the new legislation will be hardest felt by those who just want to go out for a pint or two of a weekend night, not the reckless drink-drivers who will continue to flout the law. And so it’s the modest drinkers, who venture out to socialise rather than to get hammered, who will most benefit from the rural bus scheme.
And if it brings young people into their villages for a couple of euro, rather than having them fork out €20 each way for a shared taxi to the nearest town, it’ll bring more life and more money to rural economies. You never know, it might even revive the disco scene in the church halls – even if the days when you could walk home afterwards, high heels in hand and bare feet on safe, dark, sun-warmed roads, are long since gone.