Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

The Labour Party has long supported the reform of the provisional driving licence system. It has also been an unwavering supporter of a robust and effective road safety strategy. It has consistently urged the Government to do much more to address the ongoing carnage on the roads. The appallingly shambolic way in which the Minister attempted to change the provisional licence system in the past week has unforgiveably damaged the new and necessary road safety strategy, put the Garda in an impossible position and caused untold distress to young drivers and their families. It has also harmed the RSA which has undertaken outstanding work under its chairperson, Gay Byrne, and chief executive, Noel Brett, since its establishment last year.

I welcome the fact the Minister has recognised that four days over a bank holiday weekend is an unrealistic and ridiculously short lead-in time for increasing the restrictions on provisional licence holders. However, there remain serious questions about the viability of the new deadline of 30 June 2008, and whether the driving testing regime will be able to cope with the huge volume of drivers who will now have to get their full license by that date. I hope the Minister will address these concerns in his reply.

In July 2006 our spokesperson on transport in the last Dáil, Deputy Shortall, published a detailed policy document on driver education and licensing entitled Driving for Life. Deputy Shortall correctly identified the reform of driver testing and the ending of years of waiting lists as critical prerequisites for a massive culture change in driver education. At that time there was an average waiting time of 34 weeks and a waiting list of 140,000 provisional drivers, with a further 280,000 who had not applied for a test.

Deputy Shortall set out a comprehensive strategy to reduce to six weeks the waiting time for tests, as well as a reduction of the huge backlog to 24,500 provisional licence holders. She argued strongly in favour of the introduction of a graduated licensing system along the lines of the system in New Zealand and Finland. Under these proposals, the Labour Party strongly supported the introduction of the graduated learner driver system, but felt that a radical reform and reduction of the driver test waiting lists was essential before the learner driver system could be launched successfully.

I attended a lunchtime briefing session in the Department of Transport last Thursday, for which I would like to thank the Minister, and then the launch of the new Road Safety Strategy 2007-2012. Thursday's publication presented Opposition spokespersons with 126 proposals on improving road safety. We had no advance notice of what would be in the strategy, although there had been much speculation that it would address issues such as a decrease in the legal blood alcohol limit. I expressed disappointment that the Minister again refused to make a decision on whether to reduce the blood alcohol limit to 50 mg. Instead of clearly stating whether they wished to maintain the present 80 mg limit, the Minister and the Taoiseach procrastinated and again kicked this issue into touch. They proposed to undertake another consultative process, with legislation to be brought forward in the second quarter of 2009. However, international research has long confirmed that there are significant cuts in road fatalities and injuries from a reduction to the 50 mg blood alcohol limit.

There were several proposals in the strategy, including the license permit system, that were described in an alarmingly brief and vague way and raised immediate questions about their effective implementation. The statement issued by the Labour Party concentrated on implementation and Dáil invigilation. Although we knew the new learner permit law was to come into effect yesterday, significant parts of the graduated driving license permit scheme would not be implemented until the end of 2008 and into 2009. The other deadlines and targets in the strategy, which I warmly welcome, left many questions regarding the legislative backing for the changes being introduced. To add to the confusion, the Minister stated that the law on driving unaccompanied would now be enforced, but then that there would not be a heavy-handed approach by the Garda Síochána in the area. At the press conference we detected a confused response from the platform, as the Garda Commissioner and the chief executive of the RSA, Mr. Brett, gave a totally different slant to the enforcement system.

Most people concerned with road safety saw the need for reform of the provisional driving license system, but I was struck by the comments of the chairman Mr. Gay Byrne, that the RSA was dealing with decades of neglect in driving training and road safety. That neglect has been particularly acute in the past ten years, in spite of the two road safety documents. The Labour Party document stressed that waiting times must be down to a maximum of six weeks if a new graduated licence regime had any chance of being successfully implemented. Why did the Minister not embark on a more realistic programme of introducing the new system?

The RSA stated that the average waiting time for a driving test is around 18 weeks or five months. This may be the experience in some areas, but in other areas it is significantly longer than this, as Deputy Sherlock illustrated. Several constituents of mine have been waiting since last January for driving tests at the Raheny driving test centre. They did their best to do the test, yet it just was not forthcoming. The Tallaght driving test centre has amazingly been closed down, with a 60 week waiting list. Today's edition of The Irish Times quoted a 23 year old man from Wicklow who waited 40 weeks to sit his second driving test, having waited 51 weeks to sit his first test.

Last Friday and Saturday we experienced an extraordinary uprising by the young people of Ireland and their families. They pointed out to us very forcefully how unrealistic it would be to introduce the new learner driver system without adequate preparation to prevent the law being brought into disrepute. There are a few questions I would like the Minister to address, given his extraordinary U-turn. The chief executive of the Driving Instructor Register, Mr. Des Cummins, has expressed grave doubts that the backlog will be cleared by 30 June 2008. Mr. Cummins stated that clearing the backlog of 122,000 drivers on second provisional licenses is "not do-able whatsoever" and that a huge number of people will now also apply for their driving tests "in a panicked way, pushing up the numbers". Mr. Cummins also cited the 50% driving test failure rate. Mr. Tom Hoare of IMPACT stated that the total number of driving test applications is unquantifiable at the moment, as so many paper applications have arrived at the Ballina headquarters. Can the Minister give us any indication how he will achieve the target by the June 30 deadline?

The RSA indicated today that it may mandate the private company SGS to increase the number of driving tests that it processes from 2,000 to 8,000 per week. However, will the Minister and the Minister for Finance provide the requisite funding in this area? I notice that there is a threat to the funding of the road safety agencies in the pre-budget statement. The Minister must also assure us that there are strong quality control mechanisms in place to assess the operation of driving tests by SGS, after the RSA had to carry out an internal audit and increase the training of SDS instructors, due to inconsistencies in its driving test procedures.

There is a whole range of questions that remain, including the situation regarding insurance for provisional drivers. This caused a great deal of confusion and fear for many provisional licence holders who believed that from last Monday at midnight, their insurance policies would be invalidated if they were unaccompanied drivers involved in any sort of road collision. This was particularly distressing for people holding second provisional licenses. We have read the assurances given by individual insurers, but there remains a serious question mark over the insurance status of people holding second provisional licenses. Can the Minister enlighten us on this matter tonight?

This has been an extraordinary weekend. Senior Members of this House, like the Leas-Ceann Comhairle, have said they have seen nothing like it in their political life, such was the public reaction. The stress and anxiety caused, as well as the possible damage to the road safety strategy, is the fault of the Minister. He willfully decided to do this in a country where public transport is woefully deficient, where people wait up to 60 weeks for a driving test, where our infrastructure is 40 years behind the rest of Europe. I note from the global competitive index, compiled by the World Economic Forum, that our infrastructure has been slated. Our ports were ranked in 64th place, our roads in 60th place and our railway infrastructure in 55th place, out of about 130 countries.

Last Thursday, I attempted to highlight the appalling fact that there has been no road safety strategy in place for the past year, as the last strategy only lasted until 2006. That is why we asked both the current Minister for Transport and his predecessor to consider their positions. The current Minister for Social and Family Affairs was responsible for the failure to have the next road strategy ready.

The key aspect of road safety is enforcement. The document presented to us shows a target of 1,200 from the Garda traffic corps by the end of 2008. It is surely pointless to roll out a series of improvements if we are not prepared to put the invigilation in place. I welcome the introduction of cameras, which appear to play a fundamental role in the United Kingdom and other countries. However, what will happen in this regard?

I support the remarks of my colleagues regarding the new Joint Committee on Transport, which I understand will be chaired by Deputy Fahey. I agree with the suggestion of Deputies O'Dowd and McEntee for a quarterly or six-monthly report on this subject and that the Minister should appear before the committee. Last weekend, I made the point to some of the media that I did not understand the reason the Minister did not come before the House to present Members with the road safety strategy. He is not alone in this regard as he is one of a group of Ministers who always appears to take the smart public relations option of presenting a new document in the Department of the Taoiseach or in the Royal Hibernian Academy. For example, he presented a Deloitte & Touche document on the future of the ESB at a special press conference. He presented the White Paper on Energy on a Sunday afternoon when the Opposition had no chance to respond. This House is the place in which to present all documents that are as important as the road safety strategy.

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