Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

When will we actually see the famous road traffic Bill, because we have been talking about it in terms of penalty points and many other problems to do with the administration of driving for the past two or three years and addressing the Minister about this for the past year or so? Were any of the 140,000 foreign drivers mentioned by the Minister followed up? Is there a way that any of them can be followed up? As regards the other 55,000, what exactly is their position and why are they able to dodge points? We all know people who have had a significant number of points imposed and finally changed their driving behaviour, so that there is no question that the mechanism is effective if we could get it right.

Obviously, this is a major gap in Irish law and Mr. Conor Faughnan of the AA has asked why some type of non-national driver file cannot be created to have some record of these drivers so that they can be pursued. In 2006, I recall that our sister party, the SDLP, was in Dublin and Ms Margaret Ritchie, MLA, Minister for Social Development, made a presentation to an Oireachtas committee attended by my colleague, Deputy Róisín Shortall, on this matter. Here we are three years later; we are still talking and meanwhile the collision casualties are rising. We should act urgently.

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