Kevin O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If the Minister gave half as much time to resolving the bus strike, I would be happier again. I know about the severity of the issue at stake here. I appreciate the figures the Minister has put before us today. I can assure him that he is playing a game of David versus Goliath with his role as Minister and his access to the media. Within a few days of the last committee meeting in February, he accused us of trying to turn the roads into the Wild West. I have not changed my view. I still have further questions for the Minister.

In light of the recent revelation with regard to figures being bandied about on statistics of breathalysers and crime figures, I feel that the Minister should hold back on this until all the issues around the statistics provided by the Garda are fully correlated and corrected. I have one question for the Minister about the recent survey by Behaviour & Attitudes he mentioned, which I think was conducted on behalf of the Road Safety Authority, RSA. The Minister gave the answers, but what were the questions? The answers showed that people are against drink-driving, but what were the limits given? What were the questions like and what limits were they using with regard to asking people their attitude towards drink-driving? Was it just a broad question? Everybody is against drink-driving.

I ask that the legislation not be amended. I have been through this before. First, there is the case of the person who has a good night the night before. He goes home early, getting a taxi home. He gets up the following morning and is heading to work of the assumption that he is in good order. He hits a checkpoint and lo and behold he slightly tampers the breathalyser bottle. He comes under the 51-80 mg measurement bracket. The Minister stated in his previous letter to us in February that people are not recognising that penalty as being a stick to stop a person from doing the same thing again. However, I cannot get any proper figures off the Minister or the Minister for Justice and Equality on this.

The Chairman has always said that different figures have been bandied around. I asked other questions of the Minister for Justice and Equality. She told me that the Garda was in a position to put those figures together. Despite this, we have seen in the past two weeks that figures are wrong in other areas of road traffic. There is inconsistency in the figures being bandied about. I am of the belief, as the Garda Commissioner herself said last year to the Committee on Justice and Equality, that having a Garda presence is as much a deterrent as having gardaí go out, harass people and catch them. There is something to be learnt from that. It is about enforcing the law by presence as opposed to catching people. It is often seen as a deterrent. I ask the Minister to enforce the existing legislation. There was more legislation before the Dáil before Christmas regarding drug-driving and other issues of people driving with no insurance and people who are off the road. We need to enforce the existing legislation. The Minister can then come back to us and tell us that the whole system is not working.

The issue of rural Ireland is very important here. It is at a standstill again at the moment because of the bus strike. There was a survey done in County Clare a number of years ago on people's interpretations of the drink-driving laws. The Minister will have more people inside mental institutions if he enforces this law. We are losing post offices and we are losing the small shops in the villages. The pub is the final meeting place left in many villages. I ask the Minister to reconsider this proposal and act on the existing legislation. I will not say any more because, no matter what I say, the Minister is going to drive on. I feel I am in the position of David versus Goliath. The Minister has pen to paper at his will every weekend.

I wish to make a comment. When the Minister came before us in February, I had no lobby from the Vintners Federation of Ireland. I responded that day from my own thoughts and thinking on the damage that the Minister will do to rural Ireland if he brings in this measure.