Michelle Mulherin (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The Minister issued recent guidelines on a review of speed limits and proposed slow zones in residential areas. Children will be out in housing estates where there is no through traffic, as opposed to out on the main road where a 30 km/h speed limit is in force. Local authorities need to do more in terms of engineering to slow down traffic. The Garda Síochána will not be in the estates, however, the gardaí who are involved in community liaison can erect signs and flashing lights, but people in a hurry sometimes forget there are children around. We can identify the hazard and I would like the witnesses to respond to the actual need for a uniform response because there is a disparity among local authorities. In my Mayo constituency there are several town councils and, depending on the individual engineer, there were different responses to common sense calls for traffic calming, be it speed bumps or other ways to slow down traffic.

I could not let the opportunity of the assistant commissioner being here pass without saying that I received a letter from the Minister for Justice and Equality about petrol stretching. This goes to the roadworthiness of a vehicle, under which heading I raise it. I do not have figures for the cases investigated in Mayo since July last. I am waiting for those, but I understand there were at least 150 investigated by the Garda. I was told there is not one prosecution pending and nobody has been prosecuted. It seems to be an awful waste of Garda resources and State Laboratory time. I firmly believe there is a problem in the approach to how we prevent contaminated fuel getting into the system. I could not fault the Garda after the fact, but the contaminated fuel is gone. I am quite shocked to hear not one prosecution is pending after all this time and after all the efforts and the priority given to this by Garda and Customs and Excise. I ask the assistant commissioner to tell us what is the way forward in this regard and to hear his view on it.