Gerard Murphy (Cork North West, Fine Gael)

The general objectives which this Bill wishes to promote are to be welcomed, namely, quicker driving tests and better driving standards. However, one must ask why this Bill is necessary. Is the Government losing confidence in the Civil Service and its ability to control and direct public servants? The Department of Transport has, or should have, all the necessary powers and that this Bill is being proposed exposes the fact that the Department must not be competent to deal with these issues in the Minister's opinion.

Whatever about the Department's ability, it is the Minister's responsibility. That both he and his predecessor have failed to manage the Department to get the desired results has led to the introduction of this Bill. When an issue becomes too troublesome and too difficult to handle, the immediate reaction of Ministers in this Government is to set up a quango to distance themselves from the problems. This approach has the added advantage for Ministers of helping them avoid direct accountability in the Dáil.

The first question the Minister must answer is why he thinks this authority, with a new chief executive, will be more successful than the Department of which he is the chief executive. Either he must admit the incompetency of his predecessor or admit that he is not capable of managing this section of his Department. Is he blaming his civil servants, which seems to be a developing trend within the Government, or is the Minister just commencing a new public relations exercise which will portray to the public that the passing of this legislation is a job done as far as he is concerned and that from now on the new authority can be blamed for any problems which arise?

This is a cynical exercise. The Minister knows well that this relatively small administrative job could be done well by his civil servants if the resources were made available to them. He and the Minister for Finance have no intention of making these resources available in the Department so he needs someone else to do the job for him and take the blame for this issue. The previous Minister for Transport, Deputy Brennan, made this one of his priorities on entering the Department of Transport.

We have heard recently that yet another bonus scheme to encourage testers to work extra hours is to be introduced. That funding request has again been sent to the Department of Finance and negotiations are ongoing with IMPACT to facilitate this. We have been told that under this plan, 117 full-time testers will be offered a bonus if they meet a set quota of tests in six months. The Department hopes that 80 testers will be attracted by this bonus scheme which will lead to the possibility that approximately 40,000 extra tests will be carried out this year. A similar scheme failed in 2003 and the scheme was not available in 2004 due to lack of funding and financial constraints, even though the scheme was only estimated to cost €2 million.

Some experts have suggested that the use of simulators could be used as a training or even testing device. The airline industry has used simulators for training pilots since the Second World War. Skid pads are also an excellent training facility, particularly for young drivers. However, again the resources were not made available. The logic for driver testing is to try to ensure a better standard of driving to save lives. This is the same logic which was used to introduce the penalty points system which worked very well in the beginning until motorists realised that the passing of the law was about as far as the Government would go.

Just as the Minister starved the driver testing section of his Department of funds to implement an effective test system, the Garda Síochána was deprived of resources to implement the points system. A great idea that saved lives was diminished by the Government's refusal to provide the resources necessary to implement its own proposals. The recent introduction of metric speed limits was a good idea but again it was put into operation without due planning and assessment.

The Department has stated that regional roads are to be reassessed with the clear implication that speed limits will be increased on the better ones, with which I agree. However, this should have been done before the introduction of the system. How is the public to have respect for these limits when the Government which introduced them immediately admitted that regional roads needed to be reassessed? This is another good idea for road safety which has been diminished because of the Government's continuing incompetence.

To solve the lack of implementation of the penalty points system and other responsibilities which are clearly the Minister's, it is to be placed in private hands. A network of speed cameras is to be operated by private companies. Needless to say, the reclassification of regional roads will not be the responsibility of the Minister. This job, and the blame if the occasion arises, will be passed to local authorities. At least on this occasion those responsible will be accountable to the electorate. Much of the road safety strategy was initially promised at the launch of the previous road safety strategy in 1998. The strategy clearly set out a timetable of enforcement, education and legislative organisational measures, which included the deployment of additional mobile speed detection units by 1998. Few of these have yet been provided. Garda equipment in the information technology area was to have been completely upgraded by 2000. We are now told this might happen in 2006.

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