James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will stay with helicopters and the coastguard. On the Defence Forces capacity, there is a provision in the contract that the Defence Forces could begin to play a greater role over the lifetime of the contract. Certain technical specifications and so on would have to be met on both sides for that engagement to proceed but it is something that is envisaged as a possibility. This means the Defence Forces are not quite out of the picture completely - there is provision for them to get more involved over time. I am not sure if it is in the contract but certainly in the overall objective of the engagement, there is a goal that the new helicopter fleet could serve a number of uses. It would be primarily search and rescue but, for example, we held meetings with the HSE recently on potential collaboration on helicopter emergency medicine, HEM. If someone is in a near-fatal or catastrophic accident and needs immediate attention, it is possible that the helicopter fleet can be dispatched for those kinds of incidents. It is early days of this being worked through but the intention of the business case to support it was that the helicopters might have multiple uses for the greater good. It is important to recognise that.

The RSA has been challenged and is being challenged now. That is why another Supplementary Estimate is being voted through today to provide funding for it to get to the end of the year. Since its inception, the RSA’s revenues have been entirely dependent on income generated from the services it provides: the NCT, driver permits, driver testing, commercial vehicle testing and similar services. There is a sort of polluter pays principle which is standard in many industries, such as banking, where there is a regulator which is funded by the industry. I am not at all calling drivers the polluters but the industry paying for itself is a very common standard used across many industries. However, it does not always work and it is not always appropriate.

In the current instance, what we are seeing is that, first, there have been operational deficiencies in terms of the provision of services by the RSA. For example, NCTs are not being provided on time, driver testing is not being provided on time and while commercial vehicle testing is about where it needs to be now, it was not for a while. Some of the other services provided are just about right but there have been three years, year on year, where we saw a failure to meet service levels. That is not acceptable to me as Minister of State, to the Department or, more importantly, to the people who are relying on those services to get to work, college or where they need to go, and need to have a car that is roadworthy and certified or to have a driving licence. Let us not forget that they are paying for these services. It is not a gift. It is something they contract for and are obliged by law to have. There was a need to examine that and to seek to drive greater operational efficiencies.

A separate arm of the RSA that is very important is the road safety advocacy piece which, in whatever new incarnation it ends up, needs to include a strengthened research arm that will look at emerging trends. I have just come from a meeting with driver test instructors and we were having a discussion, which is also ongoing in the Department, about how a modern vehicle is almost unrecognisable compared to the vehicle of 20 years ago. Whether it is electric, diesel or petrol, whether it has CarPlay, AppPlay or some other infotainment system built into the dashboard, whether it has a GPS on the dashboard or on a sticky on the screen, car technology has continued to evolve in many ways. Even the noise an electric vehicle makes is very low when compared to traditional engines. There are many new elements to a journey in a motor car. This is something the RSA and other stakeholders, including the driver instructors I was speaking to earlier, need to stay abreast of as they continue to evolve their curriculum, their advocacy, their guidance or their campaigns to show the latest trends and explain what people need to be aware of.

The RSA has done very important work and continues to do it. We are in a much better position regarding road safety than we were when the RSA started out 20 years ago. I believe 149 deaths is the latest count, or perhaps 151 after the weekend. Every death is a tragedy and every death that could be avoided should, of course, be avoided. However, we were in the high 300s when it started out, so it has done a huge amount of good work. The intention going forward is that the restructure will see an operational arm, which will perform the services, such as the NCT, driver testing and the mechanical services, in one agency, and then a separate entity. Whether that is an agency, an executive agency or an arm of the Department is yet to be decided, but a separate entity would do important work and would be independent of the operational piece. I believe that will drive better performance on both sides of the fence.