Ms Paula Hilman:

Certainly, in terms of commercial cabs and commercial drivers, one of the actions under the road safety strategy is about introducing the interlock system where they have to blow into something to check there is no alcohol or drugs in their system before they start to drive. That is currently being worked on.

The Department of Transport and the Department of Justice are currently looking together at what, if any, legislative changes need to be considered in relation to using safety cameras for mobile phone use and seat belt use. Currently, they have that capability but they are not used for that. That is actively being discussed and was discussed further at our last meeting with the Taoiseach and the two Ministers. Certainly, that is a very active piece of work to see if we can use our safety cameras for those two additional offences.

Garda members and GoSafe vans were mentioned. We detect roughly 14 people an hour speeding. Four of those are caught by Garda members, while ten are caught by the vans. On national slowdown day in April, where we had targeted enforcement, two out of three detections were made by gardaí. Over 500 were caught by gardaí while over 250 were caught by GoSafe vans. It depends on the operation. It is very much about working together with those vans. I think there is great opportunity here, especially for distracted driving. We hear about distracted driving regularly. That is why the Commissioner was asked about it.

We are also looking at how we extend our unmarked fleet, but that also balances against visibility. There is now some unmarked fleet but we are going to increase the number of unmarked police vehicles. I see people, when I am driving home in the evening, on their mobile phones. People see the livery car coming down the street and they can stop and drop the phone. It is how we have that balance of the high visibility marked car but some unmarked cars in our roads policing fleet as well. We are looking at how we can extend that.