Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The online portal was exactly something I wanted to ask about, and while I have a big cross through my list of questions, this is one that has not been asked, so we will start there. The online portal in many ways dovetails with stuff those from Dublin Bus have talked about, such as automatic number plate recognition, ANPR, and some of the stuff the Garda representatives mentioned in their submission about section 81 of the Road Traffic Act. We have lots of cameras. We have 14 cameras on Dublin Bus. I will admit, given my constant talking about data protection and the general data protection regulation, GDPR, I would prefer a system where a driver has to trigger it instead of constant passive surveillance by Dublin Bus, which is slightly off-putting. Certainly, an online portal for reporting these things and providing evidence has worked well in our neighbouring jurisdiction, and I would love to know why it cannot happen here. Again, as cycling advocates such as Deputy Cannon have said, we see it for road traffic offences so why not for cycling offences?

The witnesses make the point in terms of section 81 of the Road Traffic Act 2010 that it is not possible to use CCTV to enforce parking or driving in bus lanes or cycle lanes. There is a list of offences for which CCTV can be used. These include careless driving, parking in a dangerous position and dangerous driving. Surely, given the evidence we have heard from other witnesses that parking or driving in a bus lane or cycle lane is careless driving at the very least, or in some cases dangerous driving, and would certainly meet the category of parking a vehicle in a dangerous position, can we not use section 81 of the Road Traffic Act to enforce those behaviours through those bits of legislation which are allowed, which then brings us back to the portal? One of the frustrations is that, any time we talk about these kinds of issues, for example, with a local authority, we are told it is an enforcement issue. Here we have tools for enforcement that we see work, whether it is ANPR, a photograph taken by a bus driver, or an online portal, and we even seem to have a nice bit of legislation, so I would love to more about why that is not working.

I have one more question. There has been talk in some of the submissions about the culture of impunity in relation to this. I would love to hear how that looks on the ground in practical terms. Perhaps An Garda Síochána could answer that and the pedestrian network could answer the second part.