Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I spoke in the Dáil quite recently about learner drivers and the requirement on those displaying L plates to have a fully qualified driver in the car with them at all times. That is fine if you live in a suburban area or if mom and dad are in the same house as you or living next door. In those cases, it works quite well. The spirit of the rule is very well intentioned. It aims to make the roads safer. However, I will stand over the point I made in the Dáil, which is that it is quite impractical in rural areas, whether in my own county of Clare or any other rural county, for people to have to ask mom or dad if they will travel to NUI Galway with them and then sit in the car until they have to go home again. Subsequent to my speech in the Dáil, a guy emailed me. He is in his 30s and comes from Dublin but now lives in west Clare. If he is to follow the law, he must knock on a neighbour's door and ask if they will come into town with him so he can get his shopping. This provision makes full sense legally but it does not always work practically. A Road Safety Authority official was asked to come on RTÉ's "Drivetime" and on Newstalk straightaway so that we could have our ding-dong debate. I will reiterate my point. I am not blind to the road safety argument. My own mother-in-law was killed in a road traffic accident just last November on Main Street in Charleville. I hope the Department will focus on that road in due course.

The point I am making is that, since that rule came in, a whole raft of new technology has also come in. There are now speed restrictors for cars. The insurance industry now has little black boxes fitted to cars so that young drivers cannot drive over a certain speed. The Road Safety Authority answered my points very one-dimensionally. I ask that, when the Minister engages with the authority in due course and examines driver tests, waiting times and this rule, he also examines requiring drivers to have some technology in the car to restrict how fast they can go and how they behave as drivers.