Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Ms O'Donnell and wish her well in her role. I also compliment her predecessor.

With the guidance of the Chairman, I would like to see a full relationship between the chairman of the RSA and the committee. It is beneficial that the chairman comes before the committee on a regular basis. While we are talking about the matter of road fatalities, in my constituency a man was killed this morning while crossing the road in the village of Hospital. That brings home to us what this issue is all about.

Ms O'Donnell put the emphasis on enforcement, but I am equally concerned about engineering. Three elements associated with the maintenance of a safe road network are engineering, enforcement and education. The RSA has an important role to play in the case of engineering. I, therefore, ask for Ms O'Donnell's thoughts on how she envisages holding local authorities and the National Roads Authority to account for the engineering of some roads. When the latest road fatalities take place on a Saturday or Sunday morning, they do not take place on the motorway network which, thankfully, is doing a good job. Fatalities happen in isolated rural locations on roads that have been identified to local authority members and engineering staff as being in need of attention. During the good days of the Celtic tiger and now the bad days very little was and has been done with these roads. In some cases, nothing has been done. I previously cited the example of local authority maintenance of speed limits. In driving through Moll's Gap on the national secondary route from Killarney to Kenmare parts of the road are barely wide enough to take a single car, yet the speed limit is 100 km/h. This shows how in the maintenance of these roads local authorities are out of touch.

It was reported last week in the media in Limerick that cases involving GoSafe vans were being thrown out of the Circuit Court in Newcastle West. Solicitors claimed that as individuals before the court had not received notices by registered post, there was no proof that they had received the notices. The system is unravelling. GoSafe vans are positioned on the side of the road, but their operators cannot give evidence before the court.

In the context of making the roads safer, it is not exactly sending out the best signal to have loopholes through which one could drive a lorry with regard to the implementation of speed detection operations on our road network.

Another issue that has been raised before is the Road Safety Authority's operation of the National Driving Licence Service, NDLS. At the outset I vocally outlined concerns about the implementation of service and our concerns have been shown to be well founded. Mullingar, Tullamore and Portlaoise are within 25 miles of each other but there are towns in the west of Ireland covering large counties where there is no outreach service for the NDLS. In my county of Limerick, there are locations more than 40 miles away from the Parkway shopping centre where the NDLS operates. Elderly people and those from rural and far-flung areas have no access to the service at the point of contact, which is causing much difficulty. The problem arises routinely.

Another issue on the RSA's radar will be those people who restore and maintain vintage engines and vehicles for use on our road network who are being treated almost as some sort of pariah, for want of a better word. There is a suggestion in some quarters that they should bring their vehicles to the 2014 standard. As I indicated at a recent committee meeting, if the people seeking regulations had them imposed across the board, we would have former President de Valera's Rolls-Royce, with the registration ZJ 5000, dismantled in order to fit rear seatbelts, headrests and new mirrors. That demonstrates how unrealistic are some of the new regulations for parts of our heritage.

I welcome the opportunity to have the witnesses before us and it should happen on an ongoing basis. I hope we see them regularly. I hope the RSA will challenge us, as this should not be a one-way street. With the issues of road safety and potential carnage, nobody should be safe from criticism, including the Government, local authorities and the Garda.