Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I thank the Minister for deleting the phrase indicated in the amendment. We had lengthy discussions about it in the House during earlier Stages of the debate. The removal of the phrase strengthens the Bill and the application of the section, so that it comes as close as we can at this stage to mandatory testing, which I welcome.

Quite a few people in the House have had experience of giving breath samples to members of the Garda Síochána. At the start of the campaign of random checks, gardaí seemed to be requesting breath samples quite frequently, but some slippage has occurred over the last year and a half. The Minister is aware that at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Transport the Garda Commissioner told me that the number of random checks had declined from around 77,000 in 2008 to around 55,000 in 2009, and in 2010 the number has fallen again. There is a problem of enforcement that must be addressed. I thank the Minister for bringing forward this amendment in the Seanad and commend the committee members of the PARC organisation who fought such a tremendous campaign to bring mandatory testing to fruition in this Bill.

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