Paddy McHugh (Galway East, Independent)

In any event, it has not worked because Gay Byrne is the news and the road safety message he is supposed to be imparting to the public is consequently lost. As usual, he cannot confine himself to his brief. He must stick his nose into other people's business, like giving a commentary on the Opposition in this House or calling us "the other shower". Will the Minister tell Gay Byrne to mind his own business, do his job and let us do ours?

More public relations stunts are performed by the Garda on dual-carriageways and national routes, where up to six gardaí may be congregated to carry out speed checks. That can be most annoying and is a waste of scarce Garda resources. First, that number of gardaí is not required to carry out speed checks and, second, the deaths are occurring not on dual-carriageways or motorways, but mainly on county and regional roads. It is time to ease up on the public relations, get practical and deploy the scarce Garda resources to the areas with the problems and at hours when accidents are generally known to occur.

The lack of personnel to enforce the law is glaringly obvious in the enforcement of penalty points. The penalty points regime was launched in a blaze of publicity. The general reduction in the speed of motorists was obvious and remained so for some time, but then the penny dropped with motorists. The system was not being enforced, with the result that the speed limits are being ignored again.

The extension of the penalty points system, from an initial four offences to 35, has further diluted the effectiveness of that system. If the manpower was not there to enforce the original four offences, there is no hope of enforcing 35 offences. Offences now subject to penalty points include failure to leave appropriate distance between one's vehicle and the vehicle in front, which is totally unenforceable. Consequently, that dilutes the effect of penalty points.

See this speech in context