What is it about Noel Dempsey and new technology? First there was his campaign to introduce electronic elections. The fiasco over the e-voting machines has generally been attributed to his successor Martin Cullen, but in fact, the decision to switch to computerised counting in elections was very much Dempsey's. The machines, as we now know to our enormous cost, weren't up to the job.

Now, technology is biting back at Noel's plans to lower drink drive limits. Just as he did with e-voting, having caused civil war within Fianna Fáil, he bludgeoned through a compromise law - only to be thwarted by the very machines used to catch those who have had 'just one' for the road.

Today's generation of breathalysers, it seems, are too old to be recalibrated to the new lower limits so new machines have been ordered.

Drink drivers, to their discredit, will use any technicality to evade conviction so the technology has to be invincible and won't now be ready until 2011. No doubt the rural drinkers lobby will be toasting this as a victory. But the real cheers go to Noel Dempsey anyway. This time he is determined to get it right and hopefully shut off any cynical legal challenges before they start.