New legislation on breath testing of drivers will include random checkpoints and mandatory testing of all drivers stopped, The Irish Times has learned.
The legislation has been prioritised and is expected to be published within the coming months. This follows mounting concern about the level of enforcement of drink-driving legislation.
Earlier this month Minister for Transport Martin Cullen told the Dáil there would be an enhanced number of road checks throughout the country, following discussions with Minister for Justice Michael McDowell and senior gardaí.
This means gardaí are increasing the number of checkpoints they are operating under the current law, which requires that they have a suspicion that the driver is drinking under the influence of alcohol before they can breath test him or her.
This has led to a number of tests being successfully challenged in the courts when the garda who administered it was asked by a lawyer for the driver how and why he had formed the suspicion that the driver was under the influence of alcohol.
If the garda could not adequately explain the basis for his suspicion, then the test was found to have been improperly administered and the result could not be used to mount a prosecution. This resulted in people who were found by the test to be over the limit avoiding conviction.
About 4,000 drink-driving prosecutions were brought in 2004, but 1,500 were struck out, illustrating the difficulty with the present law.
It is understood the Government's legal advice is that new legislation cannot provide for absolutely random testing, as this could lead to claims of arbitrariness. Instead, checkpoints can be mounted randomly, with every driver stopped then breath tested. Guidelines on the basis for mounting these checkpoints and administering the tests will be included in the legislation.
According to unpublished figures from the Medical Bureau of Road Safety, published in The Irish Times earlier this month, 12,161 formal blood, urine and breath specimens were taken for analysis in 2004. Many of these tests would have included more than one test administered to the same individual.
They showed 80 per cent of the breath tests, 89 per cent of the blood samples and 82 per cent of the urine tests exceeded the legal limit.
A total of 9,500 roadside breath tests were carried out. However, Garda breathalyser figures for 2004 showed a wide variation between different parts of the country, with Galway having about seven times the rate of testing of counties Kildare, Carlow and parts of Dublin.