Eight young men died on our roads in the hours after Ireland's Triple Crown victory two weekends ago. It was the worst night's death toll in a very long time, and I'd be very surprised if most of those deaths were not connected to events in Lansdowne Road, and the alcoholic celebrations which followed.
No doubt the Garda Commissioner had been made aware of the importance of the game - after all, what is Special Branch for, if not to supply him with high-grade intelligence information, such as the imminence of major sports events which might be followed by large amounts of drinking? (Ah yes: the heavy charms of irony.) So just how many gardaí were deployed to check for drink-driving across the country after the match?
Some two hours after the game ended, I drove out of Dublin, through the centre of the city to Rathmines, Rathgar, Templeogue, Tallaght, and down the N 81 to Blessington. There was no sign of Garda activity: none whatever.
Yet this was probably the evening with a higher likelihood of drivers being over the limit than any other period throughout the entire year. So if we don't get energetic, high profile-policing at a time when there is a strong chance of mass criminality on our roads, when do we get it? The Minister for Justice wants to employ another 2,000 gardaí. Well and good. But where were the 12,000 he has already on the books last Saturday evening? Nor is the problem confined to that day alone. Road deaths are now up 20 over last year, so reversing the happy decline in fatal crashes in 2003. That reduction was brought about by Seamus Brennan's almost single handedly pushing through a penalty points system for speeding, against the wishes of An Garda Síochána.
Like all such new measures, the deterrent effect of the penalty points system has now been wearing off. But there is also a widespread and thoroughly deserved contempt for our utterly contemptible traffic regulations. Thanks to that buffoon Michael Smith, we have a general speed limit of 60 m.p.h. on tiny boreens. But on stretches of the N7 out of Dublin, where the six lanes are of motorway quality, there are speed limits of 40 m.p.h., because of a "redesigned lay-out" that was completed long, long ago. Needless to say, nobody has changed the signs, and equally, drivers pay not the blindest bit of attention to these speed limits. A contempt so acquired there is hard to shake off elsewhere.
In a way, it's not surprising that we see so few gardaí on our roads. Over 1,000 garda cars have been involved in crashes in the past three years: a crash a day, and one for every dozen members of the force. In the 386 crashes in 2002, 132 gardaí were injured: that is, one injury for every three crashes.
The Irish Insurance Federation estimates that for the general population, injury of any kind occurs in only about one in 12 crashes.
The average Garda sick-leave which resulted from crashes last year was nearly 60 days, or eight and a half weeks.
This is not to discount or ignore the perils of patrolling the sink-estates of Dublin and elsewhere. These duties require great courage and dedication. But I can't believe this would explain the disproportionately high injury claims, or the extraordinary amount of Garda time lost through "injury" in car crashes - in just two years, the equivalent of 36 working years: an entire career from Templemore to pension.
Then there are those curiously irresistible contagions known as blue flu.
It was reported last weekend that some gardaí in Dublin were even talking about falling victim to another epidemic on May Day, when 5,000 officers are supposed to be on duty protecting EU enlargement ceremonies. If this is the case, some gardaí are quite clearly contemplating using the threat of al-Qaeda terrorism to extract concessions from the Government: al-Garda.
This would be strange, though nonetheless inexcusable behaviour from drunken undergraduates: but from the forces of law and order, it would suggest a profound cultural dysfunctionalism.
So what is the defining purpose of An Garda Síochána? For policing in Ireland is now extensively privatised. Bouncers and security firms are now the most obvious sign of order in many towns and cities, though not exactly law.
All this is symptomatic of low morale. So why is the force so demoralised?
How is it possible that men and women who have sworn to uphold the rule of law could even consider, if only for the briefest second, advancing their interests by using the threat of Islamicist terrorists?
The tragedy is that the force has always attracted some of the best young people in Ireland, who join up because they want to be career police officers, doing a vital and honourable job for their communities and their country.
They emerge from Templemore to join an organisation in which politicking is endemic, and which no minister for justice has had the political will to tackle.
There are two Government-sponsored career structures within the force. One is the ordinary process of promotion, and the other through the Garda Representative Association, where Government-provided expenses, especially in mileage on GRA business, can amount to large tax-free incomes far greater than a garda salary.
Bad habits have become ingrained: good men and women - and there are many of them in the force - despair.
And now, the Government, without any outcry, has finally abandoned a key election promise to raise a traffic corps. The price of failing to reform An Garda Síochána will be measured in headstones.