Is it just me, or is the latest hysteria over immigrants driving on Irish roads deeply offensive?
This nonsense being spouted is at best patronising, at worst xenophobic.
Listen to the explanations for why foreign names are appearing in the lists of road deaths with more regularity: "They're not used to driving on the left side of the road," or "they're importing their drinking culture" or, and this is my favourite, "they haven't the driving skills we Irish do".
Condescending guff, isn't it?
They can dress it up as concern all they like. We see through it, see that it's nothing but finger-pointing at a voteless minority designed to deflect from their own shameful failings when it comes to road safety. Ignorant twaddle like this plays into the hands of anti-immigrants, the inadequate cretins who insist Lithuanians spend their days stabbing each other, Russian women are all strippers and Nigerians all live in penthouses and pass the time by gazing down at the new Merc the Government bought them.
I don't mean to come over as some crackpot ultra-liberal. I'm sure you all think that for every black midget lesbian one-legged dyslexic single mother out there, there's an Irish Times journalist championing their cause. It's true, for the record. But I ain't one of them.
The fact is, of the 40 people who died on our roads in January, ten were non-nationals. Of those, five weren't driving when they died. In fact, four of them weren't even in a car at all.
Three were pedestrians and one was a cyclist hit by a truck, a young Polish woman whose life could probably have been saved had the Government made it law to install mirrors to cover blind spots on trucks. Some chance of that happening.
The claim that Eastern Europeans have imported their "drink driving culture" over here makes me want to puck someone in the teeth.
Do none of these people understand irony? Drink culture? Hellooo!! Where do you think you are? Saudi Arabia? Go to any pub with a car park on any night anywhere in Ireland and you'll see people who are barely compos mentis clambering into cars and driving home with impunity. In a recent survey by the University of Ulster, 50 per cent of young motorists admitted to drink-driving. There's no reason to believe their contemporaries on this side of the border are any different.
There were 17,000 people arrested for drink driving before Christmas. Were all 17,000 Poles? Latvians? Lithuanians? Or were they Dubliners, Cavanmen, Corkonians, Mayowomen? Have a guess, do. As for the standard of their driving, remember, this is a country where you are allowed to drive home after failing your driving test because you've been ruled unfit to drive; a country where you are allowed to drive home after your car fails the NCT because it's not fit to be on the road; a country where an "ah, sure, it'll be grand" attitude is the norm.
And then there's the argument that immigrants are crashing because they're not used to Irish roads. There may be some truth in that one.
For we, despite all the ministerial chest-puffing and feather-fluffing photocalls at the opening of new motorways, still have secondary roads hidden away from the cameras that would challenge the world's top rally drivers, never mind some tired Moldovan on his way home from a 14-hour shift in a chicken-gutting factory.
If there's one thing other than repression and propaganda the Communists knew how to do well, it was build roads. But, contrary to what some people would like you to believe, they don't all lead to Ireland.
