Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is my problem. It is not the fault of Mr. Waide nor any of his colleagues who work with him. The very raison d'être of the Road Safety Authority is being called into question. Its sole function should be to make our roads safer. Yet, when Mr. Waide is questioned in this committee and on RTÉ, he lists out all of its other responsibilities, which are onerous. When he was asked by Miriam O'Callaghan on 11 April if the RSA was fit for purpose, his answer was that it was fit for purpose in delivering services - the NCT and driver testing services. That is the real problem. Anybody can deliver those services. The Department of Transport could deliver them or outsource their delivery. The sole focus of Mr. Waide and his colleagues should be to keep our roads safe to ensure there is not day after day of tragic news of people losing their lives and getting life-changing injuries. Unfortunately, their focus is in a plethora of different directions, trying to ensure they juggle these balls every day. The people here from the Department of Transport and all of us as Oireachtas representatives need to question the raison d'être of the RSA and how we can divest it of those other responsibilities.

Then the authority can focus on what should be its key ambition, namely, that when we get up in the morning and open the newspaper we are not seeing those tragic stories day after day and week after week.