Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

Last night, I highlighted the inadequacy of virtually every aspect of our traffic laws, whether the administration, legislation or enforcement. It is a long and sorry tale of either incompetence or indifference. I detected from the Government benches almost an acceptance that what we said was true. No one can stand over the current road death toll which is going in the opposite direction to every country in Europe.

Tonight I want to be a little more positive when speaking about what the Government should do and what it should stop doing. I said last night that we must change the whole culture surrounding driving. To do so, we must change driver behaviour, which means better education, regulation and enforcement. There must be better driver education at all stages of life. People need education before going near the road, and long after they have passed the test they need ongoing education. We need an improved modern and reformed driving test, a test that must be passed at some point. We need an environment that encourages good driving and punishes those who offend and endanger their own lives and the lives of others. We must do something about mandatory training courses for instructors, together with a statutory register of instructors. At the moment, one does not even have to have passed a driving test to set oneself up as a driving instructor. It is essential that people have a minimum number of lessons before going on the road.

There must be a change in the status of the provisional licence. It must be a provisional licence which leads to something; there is no point calling it a provisional licence if it leads nowhere. It is unacceptable to have a provisional licence for life. There should be a maximum number of penalty points for people on provisional licences so that there is some incentive to pass the test and learn how to drive properly. There should be a requirement for zero blood alcohol. The motorway ban should be strictly enforced. There should be an after-dark ban so that there is a real incentive to learn to drive and pass the test.

Members spoke about the need for training for motorcyclists before they go near a motorcycle. No level of road deaths is acceptable but, as far as motorcyclists are concerned, the number is way off the scale. Motorcyclists comprise 2% of drivers and they account for 25% of road deaths, which is unacceptable. We were promised that this issue would be dealt with but nothing has happened. There should be an accident investigation unit to find out what is causing all these accidents. We say broadly that it is driver behaviour, but which behaviour? It is a nonsense not to have statistics in this regard.

As my colleague, Deputy Enright, said, no toxicology test is carried out if one dies. It is at the discretion of the coroner but, in most cases, the cause of the accident is not known. If someone is to be charged, blood tests and so on are taken but there is no comprehensive information on what causes accidents. We guess that alcohol is the cause of 40% of deaths, but we do not know.

The NRA is the body responsible for publishing and collating the figures relating to the causes of accidents. It states that road conditions are the cause of approximately 2.5% of accidents, which I do not believe. It may be that that refers to national roads only but, in any event, no agency should adjudicate on itself. As it is responsible for the upkeep of roads, it should not be involved in such a task. We need an independent agency.

The gardaí must be upskilled. Approximately eight of the 12,000 gardaí have the forensic training to investigate causes of high speed crashes. No matter how many laws and regulations are introduced, if there is no enforcement, it is a complete waste of time. I said last night that fear works, and Irish drivers perceive they have nothing to fear. Until we enforce the law, we are just wasting our time.

In Victoria, Australia, there was a high incidence of road traffic accidents and a very high number of deaths. Four or five years ago, the authorities introduced a rigorous road safety campaign, which has worked. They believe that compliance measures have been the cornerstone in reducing fatalities. They are the key contributor to the substantial number of lives that are saved in Victoria each year. It would be great if we could say the same.

What is missing is not the Government's awareness of the problem, every area of policy is in a complete unmitigated shambles. I do not think anyone can deny it. It is entirely due to a lack of political leadership and a lack of a concentrated concerted effort to deal with the barriers to road safety. The Minister, Deputy Cullen, who is abroad is like a gadfly. He alights momentarily on every problem and then flits off to something else. He has not grasped the problem to ensure success in this area. One must do more than just turn up for the photo shoot. He espouses one cause after another if a photo shoot is involved. He espouses it for half a day or a few hours, with no apparent preplanning and no attention to detail. It is no wonder every initiative is floundering on the rocks of inattention to detail and failure to plan.

We were promised outsourced driver testing to clear the backlog. A number of people went to the trouble of tendering for the work and someone was awarded it. However, because there was no preplanning or prior consultation, it has now ended up in the Labour Court. Outsourcing never happened and no one took responsibility for it. We were promised outsourcing of the national roll-out of speed cameras. Then it was discovered that legislation was required, but it was not introduced and no one took responsibility for it. We were promised an automatic seamless penalty points administration system, but it was discovered that the computer system could not cope with it. A large number of gardaí did not even have access to a computer, therefore, nothing happened and no one took responsibility. We decided on an outsourced payments system for the penalty points system. I have been hearing about this for months, but nothing has happened.

The driver testing and standards authority was promised, which would solve all the problems. The legislation was published, we all spoke about it and then it was withdrawn mysteriously. Nothing has happened and no one has taken responsibility for it. We were promised random testing, which gardaí say is crucial to improving the conviction rate. It is also crucial as a deterrent. At least if there was the threat of it, it would work as a deterrent. That has been abandoned on legal advice and no attempt was made to find a solution, despite the fact that the conviction rate continues to drop. Nothing has happened and no one has taken responsibility. However, I am delighted to hear tonight that we are to have a meeting about it.

The previous Minister promised legislation to ban mobile phones while driving, but that was dropped on legal advice because he could not define a mobile phone. Nothing happened and no one took responsibility. These are just a few instances in a long litany of disasters which can only be due either to gross incompetence or a lack of political will and political leadership on the part of the Minister. I believe it is the latter because I do not think he is that incompetent. He must stop being a hands-off Minister, so to speak. He must stop being the ten-year, one-page Minister. He must stop being the kind of Minister who said he did not give Dublin Bus any buses because it did not ask. When a matter is too complex to deal with, he must stop thinking that setting up new bodies and outsourcing are a solution or an alternative to applying himself to detailed planning and getting the matter off his desk.

Once and for all he must achieve what he set out to achieve rather than try to find a legislative solution that gets the problem off his desk. The solution is for the Minister to be a Minister. The Minister with responsibility must take responsibility. It is not rocket science but if one person does not take responsibility for driving forward and delivering all these measures, and we accept they must be brought forward, legislated for and enforced, people will continue to die needlessly. The only person who can do it is the Minister. I commend the motion to the House.

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