Ms Susan Gray:

I thank the committee and its Chair, Deputy Michael Murphy, for the kind invitation to speak today on all aspects of road safety on behalf of PARC road safety group. With me today are Noel Clancy and Fiona Clancy from PARC. Noel lost his wife and daughter in a crash involving an unaccompanied learner. Fiona lost her mother and sister. Cathy Reid is also with us today. She lost her only son in a crash involving a three-times-disqualified driver.

I offer condolences to the families of the 131 people who have lost their lives on the roads to date this year. Our research shows that 42 of them were under the age of 30. This September there were 17 road deaths, by comparison with 13 last September. Wicklow and Longford are the only two counties that have had no deaths so far. Our hearts go out to the families. We know how they are suffering because we have all lost loved ones. It is a long, hard road to travel and the pain never goes away.

Let me start by explaining briefly why I set up the civil society group in 2006. On St. Stephen's night 2004, my lovely husband Steve, while working in our hometown of Gleneely in Inishowen, Donegal, was knocked down and killed by an unaccompanied learner driver. The driver was not breathalysed at the scene, which I find totally unacceptable. This 21-year-old learner driver suffered no injuries and was given a lift home. My husband died at the scene from horrific injuries. His body ended up in a field behind his hackney van. In 2004, it was left to the discretion of gardaí whether to test drivers involved in fatal road traffic collisions. I found this to be totally unacceptable. In Northern Ireland, it was mandatory.

I founded PARC a year after Steve’s death to advocate for improved road safety and provide support and information to bereaved families of road traffic victims. We receive no funding from any State agencies or bodies. PARC's first campaign for mandatory testing of all drivers involved in fatal crashes took five years. We worked with various Ministers, with many amendments to the Road Traffic Bill 2010 tabled by former Deputy Tommy Broughan to achieve our goal. Former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who was transport Minister at the time, introduced mandatory testing at crash scenes through the road Traffic Act 2011, and the law was strengthened in 2014. We will always be grateful to Mr. Varadkar for addressing these issues and to former TD Tommy Broughan for his tireless work on road safety and his support of PARC and its work.

We have been involved in many other key campaigns to update road traffic legislation and secure policy changes in a number of critical areas, including in respect of the lowering of the drink driving limits, automatic disqualification for drink drivers and stronger penalties for unaccompanied learner drivers. There are so many more.

We published in 2012 an information booklet for the families of road traffic victims: Finding Your Way. It talks families through the Garda investigation. We knew nothing when our loved ones died. The booklet also talks families through the inquest, the role of the DPP’s office, the questions they should be asking and the information they are entitled to.

I would now like to discuss in detail the key issues PARC believes must be urgently addressed by the RSA, An Garda Síochána and our Government, because we are very fearful that the gains of the road safety strategy for the period 2013 to 2020 are now being lost and that the target of the fifth road safety strategy, namely to halve the number of road deaths and serious injuries by 2030, is being abandoned. We would be grateful if the relevant agencies would address the urgently needed actions that we have grouped under ten headings and that, if acted upon, would get the fifth road safety strategy back on track.

No. 1, concerning learner permit holders, is closest to our hearts. When the RSA took over as the single authority in charge of driving licences and learner permits, it pledged, in the 2013 road safety strategy, that it would tackle the trend of people acquiring multiple learner permits without ever sitting a test. This has been going on since 2013. Every year, thousands are rolling up for their permits. They simply apply to sit the test and pay the RSA the required €85, yet time and again they get another learner permit without ever turning up for the test. That is appalling.

We thank the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, for insisting, when he took charge in May, that the RSA should reduce its driving test waiting time to an average of ten weeks so he could implement a plan to make it mandatory for any learner who has been four years on the road without sitting a test and who is seeking to be issued with a third learner permit by the RSA to turn up for a driving test and attempt it. The Minister of State said he had hoped to introduce the regulations by the end of September or the beginning of October. All the families in PARC who have lost loved ones in crashes involving unaccompanied learners, having waited 11 or 12 years for this to come about, need a date.

No. 2 concerns disqualified drivers. We attended courts all over the country for years and monitored what was happening when people went to court for penalty point offences, either to be convicted of those offences or to be disqualified. How many of them actually presented their licences in court to have their unique driver numbers recorded so the disqualification could be activated by the authorities? We were so alarmed as very few licences were presented. Parliamentary questions were asked lately about this and it materialised that 70% to 80% of drivers do not present a licence in the court.

Why is the driver number so important? Why does it need to be captured in court? It is a unique identifier associated with a driver’s record, including the driving licence, permit and any penalties. It is crucial for tracking driving history and managing disqualifications, yet 79% of drivers this year did not have it captured in court. All the agencies seem to be blaming each other. We would love a working group. The Garda Síochána Inspectorate produced a report in 2014 and stated it was alarming that very few were presenting a licence in court and also stated the matter had to be addressed. Working groups were set up and there were reviews. This entailed the work of the Departments of transport and justice, the Garda, the Courts Service and the RSA, yet we are told continually every year they are working to close this loophole.

We see no progress at all. We want to know where it is at now.

We asked how many people surrender their licences and permits when they are disqualified. In Northern Ireland, people have to give their licence into court on disqualification and it retains the licence. The driver number is caught; end of story. It is a brilliant solution. Here, it is a different jurisdiction. To surrender your licence here, the RSA asks the driver to put their licence or permit into an envelope and post it to a PO box in Cork. There is a 4% compliance rate; I wonder why. That system is not fit for purpose. The number in these dedicated, specialised roads policing unit should be increased. There are 633 in roads policing as of September. In 2009, there were 1,046. Last year at this committee, former Garda Commissioner Drew Harris stated he would allocate 75 to roads policing by the end of 2024 and another 75 by the end of 2025. We are not seeing that - 23 were allocated in the second half of last year. This year, we are told there are 68 new allocations. We are 82 short of 150. Can we get any reassurance that there will be more allocations not just to Dublin but to all units? They are specialised. We have such respect for the roads policing unit. They do wonderful work. We work with many of them. They need the numbers, equipment and vehicles. A lot of vehicles were out of service last year. The unit got 20 new marked vehicles but 18 were taken out of service. Eight were taken out this year again. They seem to be low on everything. We would love to see them get what they need to make our roads safer. I look forward to having the opportunity to hear the committee's views and take questions on the issues I have raised.