John Dennehy (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. As the Minister for Transport stated, this is the most important legislation to come before the House for a long time. It deals with driver negligence, which is the major cause of fatalities on our roads, and contributory factors such as driver error, drink driving and so on. As long as we look for excuses, we will never deal with those who are causing the fatalities. As long as they are given an out and told it was not their fault they were drink driving because they left a public house at 2 a.m. or it was not their fault that they drove a car into a ditch while driving at 80 mph because the road surface was bad, we are in trouble. We will never resolve this issue and until the blame is placed where it should be, which is on every driver, we are fighting a lost cause.

All Oireachtas Members are concerned about road safety because every time we read a newspaper or watch a news broadcast, we are reminded of the issue. Every road accident must be fully analysed. I asked the Minister if he would consider using the Health and Safety Authority to conduct the technical assessment of every fatal accident or dangerous occurrence on the roads. I used my experience as a former industrial safety officer to bring that proposal forward because a body used to dealing with similar incidents is required. The Garda must consider the legal issues and take measurements and so on for court cases but the analysis of accidents will lead to a solution in the long term. When Members refer to statistics that highlight that 30% of fatalities are due to bad roads, that will not get us anywhere.

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