The yesterday issue of Irish Independent devoted a couple of pages to a problem of drink-driving legislation and its impact on a rural society.
A couple of months ago I was thinking about the costs of the economical changes in Ireland. I have noticed that following the economical boom there is a lot of changes in the Irish landscape and even culture. A rapid grow has both positive and negative impact on Irish society and land. One of the negative aspects is drink-driving. The new drink-driving legislation is understandable, but from the other hand affected the rural parts of Ireland - especially rural pubs that started to lose customers who don’t want to walk a couple of kilometers on the winding and narrow Irish roads. Public transportation in the country doesn’t exist almost. Some of the pubs has been close down becasue they almost lost all of their customers. Some of the pub owners - facing losing their business - begun to drive their customers from and to their homes.
In my opinion Irish rural pubs have important place in the landscape and small country communities and their disappearance would be a great loss. Irish Independent report on the fastest government reaction to a backbencher proposal to introduce Nightlink buses in the country. Anyway, it is strange that the government didn’t think about that before introducing drink-driving legislation.
I hope that Irish people won’t pay that high price of the economical changes and they won’t awake in a couple of years only to look back and complain about what they lost.
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