Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I looked forward to this debate. Very few Bills will engender the type of interest either for or against as a Bill such as this, which has lived up to my expectations. As is the case with most Members, my family has not been spared being visited over the years by road traffic accidents, some involving drink driving.

On a more global scale, I wish to give credit where credit is due. As a member of the Joint Committee on Transport, I have been very impressed by the activities of the Road Safety Authority. The figures speak for themselves. Many people who are going about their jobs this very day would not be on the face of the earth were it not for changes that had been sought for many years being implemented by the Government and the Road Safety Authority. The graph is certainly going in the right direction.

While we will deal with more micro aspects shortly, it was said five or six years ago that if more cars were on the road due to the increase in population, it would mean there would be more accidents. Not so. It is now beginning to be proven that it is possible to change the culture and the way people think in this regard. A similar change happened in regard to the smoking ban, which worked. While I am not a smoker, over the years I attended places where there was no shortage of smoke. I now find that people genuinely believe they are social outcasts if they smoke in certain places. We want to transfer that psychology and cultural approach to people sitting behind the steering wheel who would drive at an unsafe speed or in an unsafe condition. I fully accept it is much more difficult to achieve this than in regard to smoking, but at least the targets have been put in place whereby we can see that if drivers takes certain steps, the number of fatal accidents and the terrible problems with severe injury can be reduced.

As has been said in all major discussions I have attended in the House over many years, the two major problems that lead to fatalities on the roads are drink driving and speed. For many years, I believed that drink driving was five times worse than speeding but I have changed my mind and now believe they are of equal importance. As the Chief Whip is present, I take the opportunity to say I cannot understand why it took the Government so long to introduce speed cameras.

To take the example of the major road I know best, the inter-urban route to Galway has a speed limit of 120 km/h. It is a fine road, the drivers on it have fine cars and one could argue that drivers should be able to drive faster than 120 km/h, but I have been convinced that this is the maximum speed in order to ensure safety, even on a very safe road. I guarantee the Acting Chairman, any Member of the House or any official that if one drives down any of the inter-urban roads at 120 km/h, it will not be long before one is overtaken by several cars, which means they are travelling at more than 120 km/h. The minute the speed cameras are introduced they will have the same effect as the drink driving laws have had and we will see an overnight change in behaviour. I will not pontificate because I drive fast if given a chance but on a number of occasions it did not pay me to do so. It is amazing the lesson one learns on receipt of penalty points. The most I ever incurred was two or four but by virtue of the fact I got them, I will always remember how and why I got them. That is the psychology of how it works.

Like everybody else in this House, I am familiar with the trauma and the awful harrowing sorrow that is landed on families because of road traffic accidents. Whether speed or drink driving is the cause does not make any difference, in the sense that a loved one is gone or severely maimed. One only has to live through that to know it because it lasts for years; it is like a cloud that sits on top of a family for years and years. Anything that can be done to reduce the number of people killed on our roads is good business, good government and good for the whole country.

I represent a rural constituency and there is hardly any other Member with a more rural background. I fully appreciate some of the points made here today. I might have a slightly different attitude in the sense I am aware of the significant level of rural isolation and it has worsened in the past five or six years. As the previous speaker said, it is absolutely true that rural pubs are going through bad times and they are not the only ones. I was delighted when the McCarthy cuts to the rural transport initiative were not implemented by the Government. This initiative is only in its infancy and it is certainly not a comprehensive scheme or anything like it. However, the concept is good and it needs to be rolled out to more places. Unless one is visually impaired, one will always see buses in urban constituencies at most times of the day. A person could stand in parts of my constituency and not see a bus in one full day and there will be fewer now that Bus Éireann have taken away some of the routes. Those are the facts.

The reduction in the blood alcohol limit down to 50 mg means that unless there is a nominated driver to bring people to the pubs, there is no other way of getting there. There is no taxi service in several of the parishes I represent because they are too sparsely populated. If there was a taxi service, the driver would have to drive from Tuam or Mountbellew and it would cost a fortune and this is not an option.

I know a good deal about the rural transport initiative and I know the areas where it is working. My suggestion would require more resources to be made available. The buses and the personnel are available from the private sector. They bring elderly people shopping in the mornings and bring people to bingo in the evenings and there is no reason that with a little co-operation between publicans and their clients, that those buses could not provide a service. This suggestion was regarded as a fairy tale when first aired but the fairy will have to leave now. It is true that this legislation will mean fewer people in rural Ireland will go out to the pub. If the rural transport initiative was included as part of this legislation it would go a good way towards alleviating and assuaging the fears of people.

There will be no need to buy more buses in order to provide this service. The country is full of people who run eight and ten-seater buses but they have no work at present because there are not as many football teams to be transported. Their commercial business has collapsed and the schools cannot afford to pay them most of the time. However, there is work to be done in this area which would also lift a great depression hanging over many people.

I have one problem which is bothering my conscience. There seem to be accurate statistics to prove that people over the age of 50 and under 80 are not as alert as drivers as they might have previously been. This is a small category and very few people in this age group are involved in accidents but if someone drives with drink taken and causes an accident and someone is killed, then if this Bill stops them driving, it would be the right thing to do. Some people in rural Ireland argue very cogently against this legislation and make the point that only a small number of people are involved and that the research is not as clear-cut as the research I have seen. It is a balancing act in that the overall principle of the Bill is to keep as many people alive as is humanly possible and to save them from being killed on the roads.

I note the Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, is in the Chamber. In my view, the speed cameras cannot be installed quickly enough and they will cause an immediate and significant change in behaviour. I believe 45 cameras will be in use initially and there will also be mobile cameras. I cannot understand why they have not been installed up to now.

I refer to the compulsory breath-testing of those involved in traffic accidents. I could never understand why this was not implemented many years ago. I welcome that aspect of the Bill as this is a very important measure and the sooner it is introduced, the better.

Regarding penalty points, it is remarkable that a person up in court for a driving offence is not required to hand up his or her driving licence as part of the process so that when the judge makes a decision, the court registrar is then in a position to manually enter the details on the driving licence. Perhaps someone will explain to me why that cannot happen or would not work. I do not see why it cannot be done from an administrative point of view. A research document shows that penalty points have not been imposed on thousands of people even though the courts have decided they should receive penalty points. When the Minister for Transport is summing up at the end of this debate, can he state whether such people will start with a new sheet? Can anything be done about what has happened? Is it possible to take it from here? That is not good business. It is simply not a good way of doing business. If it is allowed to continue, at the back of their minds people will think they have just a 50% chance of being given penalty points. This loophole must be closed off very quickly, for obvious reasons.

My understanding of speed limits is that they are usually put in place to protect those who live in built-up areas. I was a member of Galway County Council for a long time. A number of years ago, an official from the National Roads Authority, or the equivalent body of the time, addressed a meeting of the council. He spoke about the roads as they were then. He said that the aim of the policy being pursued at the time was that if one sat into one's car in Galway city to drive to Dublin, one would have an idea of the average length of time it would take. There was a desire to keep the traffic going so that people would make good time. There was nothing particularly wrong with that. The planning process we had in this country for many years allowed our towns and villages to extend outwards during the good times. As a result, speed limits have not been extended to several areas where new houses have been built. I am sure the NRA would argue it is important to compromise so that the travelling public can do the maximum amount of mileage for every hour spent on the road.

The development of interurban roads, for which I give some credit to the Minister, Deputy Dempsey, has changed everything. The problem to which I refer does not apply on such routes, which connect most of the country. While I accept that responsibility in this regard lies with the local authorities, I strongly suggest that the Minister should try to change significantly the thought process that informs them. If a person who lives on the edge of a town is endangered by the failure to extend the relevant urban speed limit, there is a case for extending the limit to cover the relevant area. Most people who are travelling long distances can use interurban routes. They might not have to spend as long travelling between Galway and Roscommon, for example, as they used to. I assume the Minister understands the point I am making. A major change is needed in the interests of the safety of people who live beside secondary routes. Many speed limits will have to be extended outwards, if not reduced.

I would like to mention an old chestnut of mine in this context. I accept that it is a difficult matter to handle. When one is driving on some of the laneways of Ireland, one sees road signs advising that the speed limit is 80 km/h. I fully understand that one does not have to drive at 80 km/h, but when some people see such road signs they think they have the right to do so. I suggest that local authorities will have to reduce such speed limits significantly. I see people driving at absolutely outrageous speeds, albeit within the law, on back roads throughout the country.

As I said before the Minister for Transport came to the House, there has been a decline in the number of people being killed on our roads. No matter who one is, one has to admit the graph is going in the right direction. Various Ministers, including the Minister, Deputy Dempsey, have worked with various officials, including Mr. Noel Brett, his colleagues in the Road Safety Authority and their counterparts in the National Roads Authority. Their efforts are beginning to work. I hope some of the provisions of this Bill will ensure that next year and the year after, there are more people alive on the roads of Ireland than there otherwise would be.

If this legislation is to be tweaked in some way, I suggest that the rural transport initiative should be extended. I made that point before the Minister came to the Chamber. Although it will be painful from a budgetary point of view, money will have to be invested in the initiative if we want to overcome the problems associated with this reduction, which are evident to many people in rural Ireland. Everything else will fall into place if that is done.

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