Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will make some brief remarks. I thank the committee for the opportunity to discuss this short but very significant Bill. In 2010, we overhauled our legislation on drink driving. The measures brought in then have largely worked well. In particular, we quite rightly reduced the permitted level of alcohol in drivers from 80 mg to 50 mg per 100 ml of blood. This was an important step in bringing the law into line with the scientific evidence that even small amounts of alcohol can have a potentially disastrous impact on people's reaction times. When the person in question is behind the wheel of a car, that difference can be the difference between life and death.

Unfortunately, there was a concession made at that time which, frankly, screams off the pages of the legislation. This was the decision to allow some people who are over the limit and in the 50 mg to 80 mg range to receive penalty points in place of disqualification. This makes no sense as law or policy. It flies in the face of the supposed principle that all drink driving offences should lead to a disqualification. The Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill 2017 provides that the three penalty points which people currently receive in these cases be replaced by a three-month disqualification. This is entirely reasonable and proportionate. It will finally ensure that the law takes drink driving seriously and is seen to do so. It is not about changing the alcohol limits; those remain the same. It is about changing the consequences of breaching those limits.

During the debate on Second Stage, I indicated my intention to address a number of matters by way of amendments to be introduced on Committee Stage.

In 2016, the Oireachtas decided to introduce a measure making it an offence for the owner of a mechanically propelled vehicle to allow a learner to drive that vehicle without an accompanying qualified driver. As anyone who has followed this issue will know, I support this measure as do, I think, a large number of Deputies. However, a point which we must always bear in mind when dealing with legislation is that it is one thing to intend to do something in law and quite another to get the wording correct and ensure that the provision makes sense as law. Unfortunately, the amendment, which was introduced in 2016 in this case, contained a number of flaws and I indicated that I would take the opportunity, posed by the present Bill, to introduce an amendment to ensure that the provision could be repaired and made workable. What has happened since is instructive. The work of making revisions to this provision has revealed a number of other significant issues. One matter which had not been taken into account or, indeed, addressed in the original amendment was that if we are saying it is to be an offence for an owner to allow an unaccompanied learner to drive his or her vehicle, what about an owner who lends a vehicle to a person who is not licensed at all? That should surely be addressed too and I am going to do so. Besides this important addition there have been several significant legal issues to be overcome in order to get this provision right. As a result the Office of the Attorney General has not been in a position to provide a draft in time for the committee to consider today. I shall endeavour to present this amendment on Report Stage. At the same time, I shall propose an amendment to section 41 of the Road Traffic Act 1994 to allow gardaí to detain a vehicle driven by an unaccompanied learner, as well as technical amendments to correct errors in section 78(a) of the Road Traffic Act 1961 and sections 13(1)(a) and (b) of the Road Traffic Act 2010.

I would like to take the opportunity to clarify a point about the detention of vehicles. There has been a great deal of ill informed and alarmist publicity in recent days about the detention of vehicles with suggestions that it would involve going into farmyards and seizing tractors if they were driven by unaccompanied learners. I would like to set the record straight and explain that the requirement for a learner to have an accompanying driver does not apply to tractors nor does road traffic law apply to farmyards or any other private land. It applies to public places. I trust in the farming community to know better than to be alarmed by this inaccurate publicity. I am glad to avail of this opportunity to put the truth on record.

On a more general point, my own experience of how much work is necessary to get provisions like this right is a lesson that I hope we can all take to heart. There is a world of difference between wanting to do something in legislation, particularly in road traffic legislation of this sort, and getting the actual provisions right. If we legislate in haste we may not be able to do what we intend, or worse, create unintended consequences.

The Bill has attracted a fair amount of interest. The overwhelming reaction that I have encountered from both the public and road safety experts has been positive. It has not been unanimously positive but it has been generally very positive. It is interesting that public support is even higher in rural areas in spite of unsustainable claims that this Bill will somehow damage social life in rural Ireland. People in rural Ireland evidently see through that. They know that rural Ireland has suffered more than urban Ireland from the damage caused by drink driving despite the claims to the contrary. They also know that rural social isolation is a real problem and has nothing to do with drink driving. Nothing could be more insulting than to suggest that rural Ireland needs a bit of drink driving as a cure for social problems, and the people of rural Ireland know that.