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

The simple point is that I believe it is disproportionate. The Minister is right but he is wrong in some of his assertions. We helped and ensured the passage of the Bill on Second Stage to allow it to move on to Committee Stage. I am concerned and worried based on the length of time it has taken the Minister to bring in this one piece of legislation. In his contribution a few moments ago the Minister seemed to believe he was the most reforming Minister on road safety, but this is the only Bill that he has initiated that he will bring to the end. The Road Traffic Bill dealing with drug driving was left by the Minister's predecessor and the current Minister has brought it through the Dáil, to be enacted, after eight months. It has taken the Minister 14 months to bring this legislation to this stage. I am concerned that if the Minister is to address road traffic fatalities on a piecemeal basis and it takes 14 months at every stage, then it would have made more sense to address the causes of fatalities at the higher end than at the lower end. This is a simple point.

It is not contradictory for me to believe that the Minister's proposal is disproportionate. A much more proportionate sanction would be five penalty points and a €500 fine. Figures were give to the committee and to the Dáil by the Minister during deliberations in the committee last year. The Minister has never answered a question to me directly about the 2016 last full set of figures the Minister made available to members during Committee Stage. Of the 8,100 motoring offences for drink driving, 93% of the people convicted were found to be in excess of 80 mg. This means that 93% of people who were convicted were subject to automatic disqualification and 7% were in the lower category of the penalty points system and a fixed fine. If automatic disqualification was the deterrent the Minister says it is, then one would expect it to have been a reverse of those figures. With regard to the regulatory impact analysis of the road traffic (fixed penalty - drink driving) Bill 2017, presented to committee members on 30 January 2017, one of the things considered by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport was an increase in the fixed penalty amount. The regulatory impact analysis states:

An increase in the fixed penalty amount was also considered, but given that this would impact on the timelines for implementing this change (significant IT administration changes in both An Post and An Garda Síochána) coupled with the fact that the real deterrent is the disqualification and not the monetary amount, it was considered not necessary to increase the fixed penalty amounts at this time.

This says that the Minister's and the Department's considerations are the increased cost and the timeline for implementation of change, along with significant changes to IT systems. It is not just I who have considered this measure; the Minister's own Department has also considered it. Some of the reasons it was ruled out of order were the increase in "the timelines for implementing this change" and the IT administrative changes that would be needed.