Uncle Gaybo was up in the wilds of Donegal recently, bringing his all-singing, all-dancing plain-talking road safety show with him, writes Kilian Doyle
It was a brave move for Gaybo got himself in a spot of bother with the good folk of the county a while back when he referred to some of them as lunatics.
They are a fiery lot up there. Proof? A 71-year-old motorist was fined €500 in Ballyshannon District Court two weeks ago for waving a shotgun at another motorist who made the mistake of beeping at him. Even a hearse driver got done speeding near Mountcharles recently.
More importantly, the place is riddled with what Gaybo called "18 to 24-year-olds with 10-year-old Golf GTis driving with their baseball caps back to front". These particular cretins make Donegal's roads among the most dangerous in the country.
Windy mountain passes are treated as personal racetracks. The R254 from Doochary to Glendowan is the most picturesque dragstrip in Europe, while the N56 through the Rosses has more doughnut marks on it than Homer Simpson's desk. These black streaks of idiocy all over the roads are the legacy of boy racers showing off to their mates on a nightly basis.
Not that they give a flying hubcap what Gaybo thinks of them. And that's Gaybo's problem. Donegal is indicative of the Sisyphan task he faces. No matter how much truth he speaketh, how many beseeching pleas to slow down he utters, will anyone take a blind bit of notice?
Stopping the carnage will require nothing less than an iron-fisted Garda crackdown in which nobody will get away with anything. Drift five kilometres over the speed limit? Get busted. Drive with a pint too many under the belt? Disqualified. Gardai will have to spray penalty points notices and fines and court summonses about like cheques in the Fianna Fail tent at the Galway Races. No mercy. It's the only way to change the mindset.
But for that to happen, the politicians will have to order it, knowing that the ordinary folk who vote for them will have to suffer the consequences. For, as the fact that over 90,000 penalty points have been doled out in the past three months proves, it's not just boy racers and hearse drivers who need attitude adjustment.
Which leads us to the crux of the matter. The sad truth is that despite all the public chest-beating about the tragedy of road deaths, nobody is going to vote for such a clampdown when they are alone in the polling booth.
And how well the Government knows it. As long as they keep getting voted in, they'll do nothing to upset the proles.
Instead, they wheel out aul' lovable Gaybo. If road deaths drop, they'll step out from behind the shelter of his massive personality and bask in the glory. Should deaths go up, they'll skulk in his shadow, leaving him to face the music alone, as he is at the moment.
So what's your point, you ask? Tis this. Did you know ministers got a 2.5 per cent pay rise last month, their sixth in a year, and that a minister's salary before perks and expenses is now €204,020 a year? Three of the rises were paid under Sustaining Progress, one of the stipulations of which is that pay rises are only awarded to civil servants on the basis of verified "satisfactory implementation of the agenda for modernisation". But luckily for them, TDs and ministers are immune from such verification, meaning no matter how rubbish they are at their jobs, they still get pay rises.
So here's the Emissions solution. Ministers Cullen and McDowell should have their wages docked every time someone dies in a car crash. See how long it takes them to order a zero tolerance crackdown then.
A lovely idea, but a doomed one. For who approves TDs' pay rises? TDs. And what are the chances of them voting for cuts? About the same as you voting for more enforcement, I'm guessing.