Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

I support the amendment because it is important that the Bill clearly specifies the functions of the new authority, although I accept the Minister's undertaking to provide for this matter in the next road traffic Bill.

I wish to add to the point I made yesterday in respect of driving schools. In the United Kingdom it emerged that while individual driving instructors were licensed and regulated, driving schools were not so regulated. As a result, anyone could set up a driving school and no regulation would apply to such matters as accreditation, claims about pass rates and the types of vehicles and signage used. Another issue highlighted in the United Kingdom was the inability to ensure adequate standards and quality control applied to those driving schools which claimed to provide off-street training for HGV vehicles or buses.

The competence or otherwise of the driving instructor is not the only issue which arises in this regard. Research in the United Kingdom identified a series of other issues connected to driving schools, as a result of which action was taken to regulate and license driving schools and driving instructors. The failure of the Bill to provide for such regulation here is a missed opportunity. I do not know who is responsible for this failure but it indicates that someone is out of touch. The Minister claimed yesterday, for example, that most driving schools are one-person operations when this is patently not the case, at least in the Dublin area.

Various driving schools make all kinds of claims in advertisements about their competence and success rates.

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