Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

I very much welcome this Bill and I congratulate the Minister on bringing it forward. I also congratulate him on all of the work that he has done since assuming office. It is encouraging for a new TD.

I have three issues under the heading of transport safety, the first being speed limits. We need consistency in speed limits. The speed limits given for some of the roads are completely unacceptable and dangerous. It should not be acceptable that the speed at which one is permitted to drive is unsafe. On other roads, and even sections of motorway, to drive as slow as one is forced to do is dangerous as well. With the co-operation of local authorities throughout the country, the Minister might, if he has the time, look at this and get people to report back on where the speed limits need to be decreased or, in some cases, increased so that there is greater consistency across the road network when we move from national primary roads, to secondary roads and further down the list, and greater safety as a result.

The second matter I want to raise under the issue of safety is creative engineering solutions to shared spaces. In some of our European partner countries there are interesting ideas as to how to manage people, cars, buses, bikes and motorbikes existing in the same space, say, in a city or village environment, and some of them are quite innovative and could have application here. Recently I noted when road repairs were happening on the N11 dual-carriageway coming through Donnybrook, where they had torn up the road and resurfaced it, and no markings had been put down but there were a couple of signs stating, "No markings in place, please drive carefully", because there was not a dedicated cycle lane, because there was not a dedicated bus lane and because there was only a small marking indicating the separation between the traffic, people drove more safely. They paid attention to what they were doing. They did not merely drive down the road blindly expecting everything to be fine. It was interesting that the lack of all of these signs, lampposts, markings on the road and everything else made people more responsible. Other cities have looked at this and have created spaces. Kensington, in London, did this. It removed much of its signage and clutter, and its markings, and found that people drove more carefully. It bears consideration on our part.

The third element under safety I want to raise is car clamping. The Minister might think this does not relate to issues of road safety, and I do not think it does. What I am hearing from local businesses in my constituency is that people are coming, they are parking and they are paying for their tickets, and they are coming late back and getting clamped. On one incident in Rathgar where a number of cars were clamped, I went to get to the bottom of it to find out what exactly was going on and when they came to me they stated it was an issue of road safety. Where a car is parked perfectly safely within the lines, with someone not having a ticket or running out of time on a ticket, that has nothing to do with safety. It is an excuse on the part of the officials. This might seem like a small or local issue. In fact, it strikes to how we interpret and implement the laws but also how we care about the local domestic economy.

Car clamping was brought in to free congestion in city streets, to make it easier to move through the city streets and to stop illegal car-parking practices. It was never intended as a revenue raising measure. In fact, it does not work as a revenue raising measure. In Dublin city, it costs more to run the clamping service than the service brings in, and yet in the view of the people living and working in the city, those enforcing clamping are trying to raise money. I think, because there is a shortfall, that is exactly what they are doing. They are not looking for cars that are blocking major streets or roads. They are going to small villages and small roads where there is no through traffic on quiet Sunday afternoons when people are doing a bit of local shopping, and they are clamping them. That is not fair. In fact, it makes a mockery of the system as a whole. It is very detrimental to local businesses that are struggling at the moment. The domestic economy is suffering and needs our help. The owners of these businesses feel that Dublin City Council is out to get them and is purposefully targeting them. If a person goes to a local shop to do €30 worth of business, but it ends up costing them €110, they will not go back. This matter needs to be studied seriously not as a road safety issue but as a question of proper policy. We need to ensure our laws are implemented and enforced in a fair way.

I ask the Minister to consider this final point. Local councillors, the city council and other public representatives are hammered when this issue flares up in the media every couple of months. It is an example of a law not being fairly enforced. It needs to be examined. We can come up with a better way of keeping our streets free of congestion and making sure cars are parked in an orderly and legal fashion. We need to ensure the council does not lose money by providing such a system. It is ridiculous that the service being run by the council is not at least cost-neutral. It does not make any sense to me. The system that is put in place needs to be fair to the people who use it - those who live in this city and want to use their cars to shop locally and support local businesses.

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