Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)

I would go further than the Minister. They should be sacked.

The Minister cannot accept that after two years this transfer has not happened. According to the report, testing standards were not applied uniformly throughout the country, there is considerable scope for unscrupulous or careless operators or test centres not to be compliant with current regulations and test results could be retrospectively changed. That could be extremely dangerous. If a lorry or a bus on the road had a bad report, it could be changed retrospectively to a good report. It is a very serious issue and it is not good enough for the Minister to hide behind the officials who might well be frustrating this. He is the Minister.

This arose from the accident that occurred in the Minister's constituency. I am not labouring this point but it was the first task of the Road Safety Authority to get this done. It has not happened and the Government has not delivered on this issue. Does the Minister accept that there are dangerous and unsafe lorries and buses in some parts of the country, because although many of these test centres are excellent, some of them are not doing their job? It is dangerous and unacceptable that the Minister has not insisted on change by now.

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