Seven people were arrested for suspected drug or drink driving over the weekend across Carlow and Kilkenny.
Local Gardaí on Friday had outlined their aim of preventing a fatality or serious incident on roads in both counties and, though this was achieved, members say they were kept very busy with a range of extra checkpoints.
Divisional Roads Inspector Paul Donohoe has been telling KCLR “Our figures were relatively high again for the weekend which would disappoint me in a lot of ways, but over the weekend we arrested another three people for drug-driving and four for drink-driving and the three drug-drivers were again in Kilkenny and we had three drunk drivers arrested in Kilkenny and one drink driver arrested in Carlow, that’s seven people there for drink and drug driving over the weekend”.
He adds that Gardaí carried out a number of mandatory checkpoints across the Division over the weekend; ” We did 18 in Kilkenny, 19 in Carlow and 11 in Thomastown and again Kilkenny seems to be the hotspot for drug driving with three people arrested and will be before the courts, and four drink drivers across the Division, before the courts in the coming weeks”.
And Inspector Donohoe says “Now we did a lot of speed detections across the Bank Holiday weekend but we detected 50 people across the Division for speeding which is very, very high, we had 24 people detected for speeding in Kilkenny, ten in Carlow and 16 in Thomastown and that totals 50, that’s a lot of speed detections across the roads over the bank holiday as well, that would be high in my eyes as well”.