Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is right. I have highlighted my intention on every occasion we have discussed this legislation. The Minister is correct that the Opposition is somewhat hamstrung due to the lack of resources. The Minister originally mooted this Bill over 14 months ago and, even with the support of a full Department and its officials, it has still taken him this long to bring it to Committee Stage. He can appreciate the frustration on this side of the House in terms of the lack of resources available to us. We put forward amendments to try to improve legislation, which is why there are Committee and Report Stages. If the Minister believes in the intention of an amendment, he has the wherewithal in the Department, while not accepting the amendment on Committee Stage, to work with me or any other Deputy who the Minister believes is making a worthwhile suggestion to try to address the anomalies that may have arisen and accept it on Report Stage.

This amendment relates to the fact that I believe the Minister is tackling the wrong element of this Bill. We are going on the figures for fatal collisions that were produced in the period 2008 to 2012 by the Road Safety Authority, RSA. We have no updated figures despite the fact that I have requested updated figures on numerous occasions from the Department of Justice and Equality and the fact that we know there have been 1 million fake breath tests. The figures we are working on, from the report for the period 2008 to 2012, indicate that 38 of the fatal collisions involved alcohol as a factor, correlating to 39% of the fatalities. Half of that 39% of fatalities involved blood alcohol levels in excess of 200 mg, four times the legal limit. The Minister has done nothing about that. He has decided to pick the low-hanging fruit in terms of putting people who might be marginally over the limit off the road. We are not changing the limits here. We are changing the penalty. In the context of my proposed amendment, I am of the view that we should introduce much stricter penalties for people who are two, three and four times above the legal limit. In the period to which I refer, people who were four times the legal limit contributed to half of the fatalities and the Minister has chosen to ignore that.