Denis Naughten (Longford-Roscommon, Fine Gael)

I commend Deputy Olivia Mitchell on bringing forward this legislation. The Government has procrastinated on this issue for the past nine years. The former Minister of State, Mr. Bobby Molloy, tried to address it in legislation but did not properly resolve the problem. We have since been given commitments by the Government on the introduction of legislation, yet it has required Deputy Mitchell to bring forward a Private Members' Bill in order to do so. I hope it will not go to a committee to gather dust and that the Government is committed to addressing the problem.

Sadly, the Government is not committed to clearing the driving test backlog, caused purely by the irresponsibility of the former Minister for Transport, Deputy Brennan, who opened his mouth once to often on the issue. The backlog in my constituency currently stands at 28 weeks, which costs young people an additional €330,000 per annum in insurance fees.

It is not acceptable that there are nine failures for every 20 people who sit the driving test. If that happened in the leaving certificate, a public outcry would ensue, yet we are prepared to tolerate it in the driving test. The test is completely outdated. No concessions are made for nervous applicants who may be competent and capable drivers but panic when sitting behind the steering wheel with inspectors beside them. There should be a mechanism for continuous assessment.

It is important the numbers of tests administered by driving testers are increased. Other State testers such as driving instructors in the Defence Forces could be seconded to the driving test agency in order to address the backlog. However, the Government is not prepared to take action.

There are significant variations in the driving test pass rate, which stands at 35% in some parts of the country and 50% in others. Even though the Comptroller and Auditor General published a report seven years ago on this issue, the Government has done nothing about it and ignored the farcical situation in which people can pass in one region but fail in another.

It is crazy that the Minister of State, by putting a roof rack on his car, could call himself a qualified driving instructor. No other place in Europe allows any cowboy to become a driving instructor overnight, and allegedly impart skills to a young and impressionable driver. No wonder we have the number of accidents that we do on the roads. No wonder we have a high failure rate when we are not even ensuring that those who are meant to be teaching young people how to drive cars are trained to a certain level of competency.

This Government has talked about the issue of insurance and the impact it is having on drivers, but it has done very little to address the matter. We should encourage young people to become competent, capable and trained drivers. There should be acknowledgement for claims-free and safe driving when a young person is a named driver on parents' insurance, for example, or if an advanced driving course is completed. There is currently no mechanism to allow for this, and it is a big disappointment that the Government and the Department of Transport in particular has not reacted to the issue, or tried to help and encourage young drivers to become safer drivers.

Deputy Enright raised the significant number of unofficial blackspots around the country, where there has been a litany of minor accidents, but until there is a fatality, the location does not become a priority for the NRA. Even when the local authority looks for funding from the NRA to upgrade substandard sections of road, it can wait years for it. For example, Roscommon County Council applied this year for 21 separate low cost road action safety projects, but received funding for only three projects. These 21 extremely dangerous locations have been practically ignored by the NRA and the funding has not been provided to the local authority to address near-fatalities and possible future fatalities on the road network.

Can we expect this Government to do anything other than what it has done to date? Three years ago, the then Minister for Transport, Deputy Brennan, promised to bring in an automated system that would issue a reminder to people when their driving licences were up for renewal. Nothing has happened since. The issue of road safety is not a priority and has not been a priority. It is about time the Government started to deliver on some of its promises. I commend the Bill to the House.

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