Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I agree with the Minister that driver behaviour is the single biggest cause of most accidents. However, driver behaviour is influenced by official action and particularly by official indifference. The message going out to drivers must be that there is official indifference to road safety given that there are 335,000 drivers with provisional licences, most of whom have failed their driving test. That is the background to the discussion on road accidents.

Testing is critical. The Minister stated he has advertised for ten additional testers. He also stated that legislation to set up an independent body is imminent and will be back before the House shortly. It is critical that this authority has the budget to provide a sufficient number of testers. I do not want to wander into the area of industrial relations difficulties, and I wonder why these difficulties were not resolved during the benchmarking process and why we are now offering further incentives for increased productivity. Nevertheless, I imagine the background to this is the fact that the testers will probably all be switched to an independent authority, for which the Minister will not be answerable to the House. Therefore, I must ask now whether that authority will have the budget to recruit testers when required to clear backlogs.

The issue does not only concern backlogs. If the authority has the new road safety remit the Minister promises, driver testers will be responsible for retesting and further activities in regard to ongoing education. In addition, the population is increasing. The budget of the authority is critical in ensuring it can recruit testers when required. The Minister must agree that Ireland is the only country in Europe where road deaths are increasing per capita and where one third of a million people drive on provisional licences. The situation is unacceptable.

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