Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are here to discuss the figures and the budget and to focus on the bang for our buck. It strikes me that we drive the roads every day, and none of us is a saint. The figures are going the wrong way. Given what we are seeing on the roads, it is amazing that the figures are not a great deal worse. The figures do not capture how serious this is. We are in a really difficult situation in light of the volume of traffic on our roads. Every day of the week, we all witness incidents that could have resulted in crashes. We still call most situations accidents but in my view, most of them are incidents because things are done wrong. They are not necessarily accidents. They are incidents where someone has done something wrong in most cases. The terms "incidents" might capture it better.

On the research and the data, certainly when there are crashes on some of our main roads, and where there was an option to take a different road, for example, a toll road, is there any analysis done as to why the vehicles were on that road at that moment? There are many crashes on the main national routes, be it someone coming up behind, someone not overtaking properly or when someone is turning left or right. The whole idea of building motorways was to make roads safer and have fewer left turns, right turns and so on. Do we analyse why a vehicle was on a particular road in some cases? This might lead us to believe that maybe we should look at our toll roads. I do not need an answer now, but it is something that would be worthwhile to understand to really get behind some of these accidents.

Mr. Walsh mentioned the ideal figure of 200 testers. I presume he is assuming that it is somewhere in the region of 170 to 190 permanent roles, plus some on contract as well. The numbers will go up and down a little but it is best to be in a situation where we can respond to demand. I do not want the witness to answer now as my time will be cut but perhaps he could keep it in mind.

On the dental appointment system, I always cancel my dentist appointment when the year comes up, so I am sure it would be the same with the NCT. I want to go back to the link between tax and insurance. As I understand it, if a person does not have the certificate of roadworthiness and is in an accident the insurance company might not insure and may claim that the person is not insured. Is that true or is it false? If that is the case it is an issue for all insured drivers on the road and for people who think they are insured but are not insured. With the motor tax system, surely to God it is an easier way to link it to tax and insurance in order to make us do it. We are all in danger of putting it off and I am sure I was as guilty as everybody else of putting off appointments when they come. If the witnesses have the magic formula perhaps they could enlighten me more on what they are thinking with an appointment system. I am interested in getting more information on it. It sounds as if we are working to a system but I would like to hear the thinking on that.

With regard to the advocacy role of the Road Safety Authority and its advice to the Government and everybody else, who is in charge of the drive to use technology better? Mr. Waide mentioned this at the start. I got a sense that he is disappointed that technology is not used to its capabilities in managing our roads and our cars. Who can drive that? I sense that Ireland as a country is a good test bed for technology in many cases. Are we missing out on opportunities that other countries are already using when it comes to making our cars safer? Is there more we could do legislatively?

With regard to buses, Dr. Walsh said that driver age is a decision for Bus Éireann. I did not know we had a national office for traffic medicine. This is news to me. Maybe we need to bring that person to the committee too. Is there any chance we could get a solution in respect of this matter before the new school year in September? Can somebody make a decision, because if it is the wrong decision to stop people-----