Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

I will share time with Deputy Lynch.

The Labour Party welcomes and supports this Fine Gael Bill. I commend Deputy Olivia Mitchell on her initiative in drafting it and bringing it forward. We welcome the opportunity to debate the issue of mobile telephone use while driving because the practice has become increasingly pervasive and is a major contributory factor to collisions on the roads.

The Bill is presented to us in the context of a raft of promised road safety measures that have been delayed for one reason or other. Mobile telephone use, random breath testing and North-South recognition of penalty points are issues which have been tied up in the Office of the Attorney General for a considerable number of years, without resolution. The problems associated with the Road Traffic (Construction, Equipment and Use of Vehicles) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2002 were identified in 2002. Since then the issue has gone back and forth between the Attorney General and the Department of Transport with little or no progress in producing a new law. The Department seems to be so afraid of getting it wrong again that it would rather do nothing. That was the attitude taken to random roadside breath testing and it resulted in a situation where gardaí did not enforce the law properly for a number of years when, as it turned out, they could have done so. I welcome the Attorney General's recent clarification on that and wonder why the Minister has not also welcomed it and encouraged the gardaí to enforce the law they have at their disposal. The Minister is still talking about changing the law.

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