Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I am disappointed the Minister has refused to accept a new amendment in which paragraphs (k) and (l) respectively deal with safety testing for drink and drugs and psychological testing policy. There is a dearth of modern legislation in this Bill. It is clear we will not get to my amendments. In my amendments Nos. 95 and 99, I tried to insert into the Bill some of the missing major points of current safety legislation. For over a year, the Minister has refused to address the issue as his predecessors did for over a decade. I commend my Fine Gael colleague and spokesperson on road safety, Deputy Shane McEntee, who has pursued this matter vigorously.

Amendment No. 91 deals with mandatory testing for alcohol after a collision. The Minister has refused point blank to bring that kind of amendment forward through a road safety Bill. Members of the civic group campaigning on the issue for the past number of years, Public Against Road Carnage, PARC, were in the Public Gallery last week during the previous discussion. My intention was to amend the Road Traffic Act 1961 which is almost half a century old in order to make it address critical safety issues. The Minister has failed absolutely in respect of important safety matters, particularly in this area of public transport.

With regard to paragraph (f) in the amendment, for the past nine or ten months I have been trying to get the Minister to give us information on the big dig in Dublin. This will have such a profound impact on the centre of the city that it seems incongruous not to have it in the Bill. Perhaps it is not there because this Government is not going to go ahead with these projects. A question mark has been placed over metro north and the interconnector. Why is the Minister not brave enough to put metro north into legislation so we would know that these related major traffic management matters and infrastructural developments would go ahead? That would give the capital city a public transport system similar to those in the allegedly poor Eastern European countries that joined us four years ago. The public transport systems of those countries, even in provincial cities, put us to shame. This is an opportunity for the Minister to act. I ask him to be courageous in this regard, to put the provisions into the Bill and hold the Taoiseach and the Government to account.

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