Meanwhile on the Roads...

I don’t, just amateur dramatics, but whatever

I took that to mean they would be able to over take on either the left or right, rather than just on the right (is that correct? I'm trying to think, if you're cycling on the right in heavy traffic, you'd be overtaking on the right, but now you can filter on either left of right).

It's a law for urban areas, and a lot of Spanish cities have one way systems with multiple lanes, so this makes sense, I think.

I'd imagine both 'undertaking' and splitting lanes in the case of multiple lanes travelling in the same direction were the illegal bits

Tim Moore in his Vuelta book had a similar experience. He was told to go buy a helmet in the next town and I think the cops either followed him to make sure he did, or made him come show them - can't remember exactly

If you park in a disabled bay with no permit.. you get a six month driving ban

Detective Garda JP O’Brien said he was on an armed escort to the hospital and noticed a number of disabled spaces taken up by cars. He “gave her an hour and a half to move”  but she didn’t.

Judge Andrew Cody described the incident as "absolutely despicable” and handed down a 6 month driving ban and fine €750.   https://www.offalyexpress.ie/news/home/1701348/woman-in-midlands-gets-driving-ban-and-fine-for-despicable-act-in-hospital-carpark.html

WRT your 2nd point, I'd put the UK as an outlier in being a protestant society, but having a similar attitude to the perceived road hierarchy as here.

It's undoubtedly a multi-faceted problem. I think the various aspects of the RTA need to be tightened to close off loopholes allowing spurious defences, but this is of course fraught with difficulty in getting the balance right. Removing the nonsense "shooting fish in a barrel" defense for the GoSafe vans would be a good start and low hanging fruit. Sure you can have your day in court, but it should be much harder to refute (uncalibrated speed guns, somebody else driving the vehicle….)

Unfortunately with the Caps From Kerry with their feet under the cabinet table, I can't see much happening on the political from anytime soon, though I expect the sod to be turned on the Kilgarvan to Dublin motorway any of these days.

Until judicial bias (which really shouldn't be a thing) is reigned in and technicalities tightened up there's not much point in getting the Guards to step up (see point 3 above).

A bit of application of hate crime laws against gobshites on media, both social and mainstream, wouldn't go amiss either (take a random comment from a Journal article, replace "cyclist" with black/woman/trans and see how quickly the commenter would end up with a knock on the door).

Jebus. Did the entirety of Dublin and Wicklow get out the wrong side of bed this morning? The amount of cúuuuuuunts close passing, and dangerously overtaking into oncoming traffic was off the freakin' charts 😡

Its a pity they won't go after the drivers with the large text / logos in the middle of the actual windscreen.

Its a pity they won't go after the drivers with one or (I'm looking at you, taximen) two phones in the middle of the actual windscreen.

Move over buffalo & doozerie, Seth & Andrew have joined forces.

Why do judges keep deferring and adjourning cases such as this, it's no wonder the counts are so backed up and inefficient. It took over 6 months for this case to be heard so obviously plenty of notice but it still hasn't been closed off. The driver was represented by a solicitor so if that wasn't sufficient why not just fine her an additional amount in absentia and be done with it.

This seems to be more and more common, large iPad sized video screen retrofitted onto the dash, being used to play a podcast video, two beards gushing to camera on this occasion.

"But I'm not watching, I'm only listening"? Why would you go to all that bother and not be watching? Could you possibly avoid watching at all, when the beards say something particularly funny or interesting?