Mr. Ray O'Leary:

It recurs frequently in discussions on the road traffic law code. Clearly, it makes the lives of professionals dealing with the law much easier if the law code concerned is consolidated. That might reflect the views of certain organisations. We are not aware of any specific cases where the lack of consolidation caused prosecutions to fall. We have looked at a few instances where similarly lengthy and complex law codes have been consolidated. There are only two proper examples to date, namely the Companies Act and the Finance Act, both of which have limited criminal elements. I forget the technical term for that kind of comprehensive consolidation. Whoever lectured me in law more years ago than I care to remember would give me a slap.

There are two kinds of consolidation. One involves putting the words together and the other involves tightening up legislation without changing the substance. Both the cases I mentioned used comprehensive consolidation, where the code was put together and some amendments were made to pull it together wherever there were existing inconsistencies or imperfections. Given the scale of the road traffic law code and the investment of time required for any consolidation, that would be the best option in this case. Based on those two examples - and this is where the challenges come in - it is probably a job for a dedicated team of half a dozen people with appropriate expertise who would almost have to be locked in a room for four or five years. At the same time-----