Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputies for their contributions. With all the activity and the political statements that were made over the weekend one would have expected people to be a bit rougher. I acknowledge and thank the Deputies for their constructive approach. My mother used to say that the person who never made a mistake never made anything. Early on Friday morning, in view of the response to the five days' notice for people to get their house in order, it was quickly evident to me that I had a choice to make. One possibility was to brazen it out, as I could have, which would probably have resulted in my losing the almost universal support I had in the area of road safety across and outside the political divide. The alternative was to do as I did. When I first came to the House, the definition of a U-turn was for somebody to say he would do something and then turn around and say he was not going to do it. That definition does not apply here. The U has gone a certain distance, but not all the way. We are going to do what we set out to do, but instead of doing it on 30 October we will do it on 28 June. That is a reasonable outcome from everybody's point of view.

I do not accept there was not enough notice of this measure. I give the Deputies opposite credit for this, but their predecessors as far back as 2002 and 2003 were saying this should be introduced overnight.

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