Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

My aim is to make the section more flexible so that if a new device comes on the market in six months' time, the Minister will be able to deal with it appropriately without having to go back to the drawing board. There has been much interesting research recently on the general issue of the ban on the use of hand-held mobile phones, some of which was covered in the media last week in the context of the accident rate for people who use mobile phones, whether hand-held or not. The research appears to indicate there is very little difference in accident rates involving people using hand-held and hands-free mobile phones. Some of the research has indicated that a hands-free phone is more dangerous because it involves the person stretching to wherever the phone is located on the dashboard. There has been research on that for the past ten years and it was covered in a recent newspaper article.

Does the Minister have a view on that? Does the issue of banning them arise at European level? One must start somewhere. I am not criticising the Minister but one must look at the research and work on an evidential basis. It appears there is little difference in accident rates. Perhaps the Minister would commission a study on that issue because we may be fooling ourselves into thinking it is perfectly safe to use a hands-free unit when the research does not show that.

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