Drink-driving: If you can't stop the driver, stop the car

THERE IS A person who was arrested for drink-driving 11 times in a single year. Not over a lifetime. Not over a decade of poor decisions. In one year.

The Medical Bureau of Road Safety’s annual report for 2024 (the latest we have) confirms that in the same year, one driver recorded a blood alcohol level of 428 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 50.

The MBRS data shows 263 drivers were arrested twice for intoxicated driving in 2024, which is an increase of 8% on 2023. Thirty-six were arrested three times. And seven were arrested between five and 11 times, with one person accounting for all 11. These are not abstract statistics. 

Across all those arrested and tested in 2024, the median blood alcohol level was 142 milligrams per 100 millilitres — among those who tested positive. That is nearly three times the legal limit, as a median. The highest recorded level in urine was 525 milligrams. The youngest driver arrested was 14 years old.

Ireland had 185 road deaths in 2025, up from 171 the year before, and 155 the year before that. The European trend, for contrast, is going the other way.

Norway has the fewest road deaths in Europe with 16 road deaths per million people; Sweden is second with 20. Ireland is ranked seventh. Thirty-seven per cent of drivers killed on Irish roads whose toxicology results were available tested positive for alcohol, and Ireland has the lowest level of roadside breath testing in the EU.

Into this picture, enter the alcolock — a device that has been around for decades, works reliably, is mandated across a growing number of countries, and has been fitted to every single vehicle in one Irish company’s fleet since 2008.

Matthews Coach Hire, based in Inishkeen in Co Monaghan, describes itself as the only passenger transport company in Ireland to have alcolocks installed across its entire fleet. The company made the decision following a bus crash in England in 2007 and was recognised by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) for it in 2009.

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They carry 4,500 passengers a day on services from Dundalk, Drogheda and Bettystown into Dublin, and they’ve been doing it with an alcolock on every vehicle for nearly two decades. Not because the law required them to. Because they decided it was the right thing to do.

The device itself is straightforward. A driver blows into a breathalyser connected to the ignition. If their blood alcohol is above the pre-set limit, the engine won’t start. If they stop for more than 30 minutes, the system resets and requires another test. Modern units require rolling re-tests during the journey, so you can’t hand the mouthpiece to a sober passenger and climb in behind the wheel.

Sweden has been using alcolocks since 1999, starting with a rehabilitation programme for convicted drink drivers, a voluntary alternative to licence revocation — and expanding progressively. By 2010, all Swedish school transport was required to have them fitted. Taxis, trucks, buses and trains followed. Drivers who completed the Swedish programme reduced their reoffending by 60%, with an approximately 80% reduction in police-reported traffic accidents compared to the pre-treatment period. Belgium, France, Lithuania and Poland have all introduced legislation requiring alcolocks for convicted drink drivers. Italy is preparing to follow.

Rules in place

There is a detail about newer cars that tends to get lost in this debate. EU Regulation 2019/2144 already requires new vehicles to be equipped with a standardised interface to enable aftermarket alcolock fitment. The receptacle is physically built into cars being sold in Ireland right now.

What is missing is the law to put it to use.

Ireland is not entirely standing still. In 2024, the MBRS completed the testing and approval of the first four alcohol ignition interlock devices for use in this country. Professor Denis Cusdirector of the MBRS, described it as having the potential to be one of the most significant and transformational developments in road safety in decades — when rolled out on a statutory basis.

The MBRS presented at the first international conference on alcohol ignition interlocks in Lisbon last October. In February of this year, Minister of State Seán Canney said that “nothing is off the table, such as an alcohol interlocker, which will prevent you from starting a car if you have drink taken”. The RSA finalised a working group report and the Department of Transport is now considering it.

There are legitimate questions around implementation, and the most common one is cost — who pays for the device?

The answer from countries that have already done this is instructive. In Belgium, where alcolocks have been mandatory for serious and repeat offenders since 2010, the offender pays. Belgian courts already impose fines of up to €40,000 on repeat drink drivers, and judges can simply subtract the cost of the alcolock programme from that fine. The state pays nothing extra; the offender funds their own rehabilitation tool from within the penalty they were already facing. Italy, which brought mandatory alcolocks into force as recently as last month, takes the same approach — all costs fall on the convicted driver. Nobody is arguing the Irish taxpayer should foot this bill.

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So the devices are approved. The evidence base is solid. The minister says nothing is off the table. And the report from the working group recommends a structured interlock programme as a mandatory part of the judicial approach to serious or repeat drink driving. In certain states in America, after alcolocks became mandatory for all convicted drink-drive offenders, fatal crashes fell by between 7% and 8%.

The working group paper also reported that almost 80% of first-time drink-drive offenders have alcohol use disorder. For second-time offenders, that figure is 89%. For those convicted a third time, it is 98%.

Cusack has been clear that an alcolock programme alone is not enough. Alongside the device, there needs to be a referral pathway to addiction support — and he has described that support infrastructure as completely underdeveloped in Ireland. The alcolock stops the car. It doesn’t address the dependency. Both matter and both are needed.

The case being made — by the MBRS, by the RSA, by road safety bodies across Europe — is targeted and proportionate. Give the courts the power to impose alcolocks on people with serious or repeat drink-driving convictions. Pair them with mandatory addiction support. Keep them on the road if they’re sober. Stop them if they’re not.

A coach company in Monaghan worked that out in 2008.

The Department of Transport is now “considering” a report. That is a sentence that carries a particular weight when set against 185 deaths last year, a repeat-offender cohort that included someone arrested 11 times in 12 months, and a figure showing that virtually everyone convicted of drink-driving three times or more has a clinical alcohol problem.

“If we don’t start with the alcolock,” Cusack said, “we’re certainly not going to tackle what may well be now a core of repeat offenders.”

It is hard to argue with that.

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