Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)

Like my colleague, Deputy Hayes, I commend Deputy Olivia Mitchell on introducing this Bill. It is an appropriate week to do so when a chairman of the calibre of Mr. Gay Byrne has been appointed to the Road Safety Authority. It is appropriate that our attention should focus on one critical aspect of road safety, namely, the use of mobile phones while driving. I welcome the appointment of Mr. Byrne to this position. The Minister has a mixed record in various portfolios but, in the appointment of somebody with the energy and independence of Mr. Byrne, he has undoubtedly made a wise decision which we all hope will pay dividends when it comes to reducing the carnage on our roads. I note Mr. Byrne has made it a priority to curtail the practice of provisional licence holders driving alone on our roads; the principle of a provisional driver being accompanied by a passenger with a full licence needs to be affirmed. It is with this in mind that this Bill has been introduced. It makes it equally an offence for a passenger to use a hand-held mobile phone when the passenger is the full licence holder. This may be viewed in some quarters as overly harsh, but it must be this way as otherwise it would make nonsense of the principle that provisional driving licence holders must be accompanied by a full driving licence holder.

On the critical issue of drivers using mobile phones, it was with a sense of astonishment that people learnt in recent months that there were no specific plans to introduce mobile phone use while driving as a penalty point offence. In January, the extension of the penalty point system fell short of the Government's promise in 2002 to introduce 69 penalty point breaches of the Road Traffic Act. There will be 35 penalty point breaches under the new regime which will come into effect from Saturday next but the imposition of penalty points for the use of a mobile phone was ignored. In this context, it has been proposed that two penalty points will be imposed on the offender if a person is convicted of the offence. In addition, it provides for a stiff penalty, with the imposition of a maximum fine of €5,000 and a prison sentence of up to two years for the offence.

Like much road safety there is a curious double think at work among many motorists when it comes to using mobile phones. Although motorists, in theory, can be prosecuted for careless driving if observed using a phone by a garda, there is a prevailing attitude to the effect that "this does not apply to me, I am a safe driver". Irrespective of being found over the drink driving limit, over-tired or making a call while on the move, the attitude prevails that "it is safe and that the law applies to others and not to me". We have all seen such drivers and the only way to impress on them the seriousness of what they are doing is to have a firm policy on the use of hand-held mobile phones.

I refer the Minister to a recent British Medical Journal study which found that people using mobile phones while driving were four times more likely to be involved in a serious crash and that it slowed down the reaction times for younger drivers considerably. This has been well known from the evidence of other surveys and studies. In this instance researchers looked at 456 drivers aged 17 and over who had been involved in a crash and who required hospital treatment over a two year period. They found that a mobile telephone used in the ten minutes before the crash was associated with a four-fold increase in likelihood of crashing.

This is a pressing issue. Lives could be saved if the Government acted immediately on this issue. It demands a sense of urgency from this Government. A sense of urgency has been sadly lacking in this Government over the past while because it thinks this is an unpopular measure with the public. On this specific issue, as long ago as 2002, three quarters of the people polled by irishhealth.com supported a ban on the use of hand-held mobile telephones by drivers. This message resulted in this legislation and I am delighted the Minister has supported Deputy Olivia Mitchell's Bill.

Before I finish I will relate a story about a family I know quite well. My neighbour, his wife and their young child were coming home one evening from visiting the family home in another county, when a driver using a mobile telephone came round a bend and crashed into them. Sadly, their only child died in that crash.

I urge the Minister to treat this as a priority. We all are driving and see motorists, even lorry drivers, using mobile telephones.

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