Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on this Bill. With hindsight and experience regarding penalty points from the different situations and evolving campaigns for safer roads over past years, we should now be in a position to bring in legislation that has been well thought out. It is important also that it is drafted well by the Departments concerned. Much of the legislation we introduce is not assessed with regard to the impact it has on the public.

The main intention behind this legislation is to have safer roads, fewer fatalities and better driver behaviour. However, we in this House seem to deal with issues in isolation, rather than think of the wider picture and the impact of the legislation we introduce. I will never forget driving home from here one Thursday evening after only two years or so in this House and hearing Gay Byrne or Noel Brett announce that from a date three weeks hence no driver on a provisional licence could drive without being accompanied by a fully qualified driver. That was the first I heard of that and my office was overrun with calls. That announcement caused mayhem. People on provisional licences needed to get to work or college and even people in their 50s and 60s were on L-plates. All of a sudden these provisional drivers were going to be blamed for everything and were going to be banished to hell or to Connacht. This proposal was worked out through the system and common sense dawned, because everyone's office was inundated with queries about it. For various reasons, people could not get up to date with the legislation instantly.

We had a similar situation this week.

Last May we passed legislation on off-road vehicles. I spoke on it, as did other Members of the House, and it was passed by the Government with its large majority. Again, no effort whatsoever was made to educate the public on the fact it was happening. People were affected for many reasons, such as vintage car owners, those no longer in jobs whose cars were parked up, others who had emigrated and others who could not afford to keep the car on the road. There has been mayhem in recent weeks. People have been unable to get their machines or cars passed and local authority officials have been put under pressure. I salute the officials in Tipperary and other places throughout the country for the effort they made. In many places gardaí had to be called, not because people were violent but because they were frustrated and the crowds were so big. We cannot introduce knee-jerk legislation without having an overall assessment of what is needed.

With regard to road safety, the three prongs of enforcement, visibility and education are necessary. We must start with education in our schools. For years I have been calling for the transition year to be used. My daughter is in a transition year programme at present and it is fabulous. My other children also took part and did many very interesting and good things. It is a vital area and we should go into the schools with a programme for teachers. Roads which were national roads until recently could be used because vast areas are just turning into halting sites. They are adjacent to towns and should be used by schools with the Road Safety Authority and gardaí involved in training people on proper driving behaviour. The Civil Defence and the fire brigade could also be involved, as could others who must deal with the horrible casualties of a serious road accident. Young people in particular should be educated. Many people my age and older have bad habits and we must live with them and pay the price of penalty points. We should be trying to improve, but it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks. It is certainly necessary to examine this issue.

I support the Bill with regard to many areas. Young drivers aged between 21 and 25 remain the group with the largest number of road deaths. For years I have stated that we must examine a deeper issue in this regard, which is suicide. Many incidents are not accidents; they are deliberate acts. People are desperate for many reasons. There are single-car accidents unexplained by the coroner's report.

The majority of fatal collisions, approximately 63%, occur on local and regional roads outside built-up areas. This must be examined. A number of years ago we reviewed the speed limits and changed every sign in the country from miles to kilometres, and now every boreen and cul-de-sac has a speed limit of 80 km/h. This is pure daft because one could not cycle up many of them. We cannot have road signage without having an impact on wildlife services. I do not know how to put sense in their heads to insist that the hedgerows along all roads be cut. Representatives of farm contractors are in the Visitors' Gallery. They have been lobbying on safety for a number of years. The Minister and the Acting Chairman know that someone building a house must have visibility of 70 metres on a road with a speed limit of 80 km/h and 140 metres on a road with a speed limit of 100 km/h. However, a number of roads are closed in. We have legislation whereby every farmer can receive a hedge notice to cut the hedgerow. My late father was prosecuted in the 1950s. It should be used. It is pointless having Noel Brett and Gay Byrne on road safety advertisements if we neglect this simple issue. Wildlife people cannot insist that we not cut the hedgerows in a month without an "r". This is ridiculous. Surely road safety and one life is more important than any wildlife specimen. I support wildlife totally and I salute the work done by gun clubs, wildlife clubs and fishing clubs, but we must be sensible. We must have common sense. We should put the quangos in a room and knock heads together to tell them this is nonsensical. It would be a basic tool to insist every farmer cut his or her hedges and allow and force every local authority to cut back hedges. Large machines have longer bonnets and one cannot see anything when coming onto a road. It is lethal. I appeal to the Minister to consider this aspect. If road safety is considered with regard to planning permission, why not have it considered in this most vital area to save people's lives?

The speed limit of 80 km/h on minor roads should be addressed. It is a nonsense. I do not disagree with the speed vans which are everywhere, but they were supposed to be in places where fatalities had occurred. I see them in many places doing nothing but being a moneymaking machine. Sometimes they are in places where fatalities have occurred, but I have seen them in places in my county that I know well where I never heard of accidents occurring. They are like machines hauling in money. I salute the traffic corps, but it has been depleted due to a lack of transport and equipment since before the Government came to power. They did not even have cars in my area a year ago. I acknowledge the fact they have some now, but how are they to do the job without the tools of the trade?

This year we had good weather. During the harvest I saw a member of the traffic corps apprehending a combine harvester with no tax. The tax was out for three months. It was apprehended when it was crossing the road. The Garda decided the vehicle had to be impounded and sent to Dublin for a lorry. After hours of waiting the lorry arrived, but they were not able to put the combine harvester on it. The Garda insisted the combine harvester be driven to the pound in Dublin. Two days' harvest were lost and huge fines had to be paid to get the combine harvester back. This is nonsensical. Combine harvesters and silage harvesters are on the road for only 20 days, or perhaps a month, each year and should be taxed accordingly. The new law does not acknowledge this. A leisure boat is something different, but these machines are bread and butter for Harvest 2020. The incident was very frustrating. The man could have overlooked it. Anything could have happened. On many other occasions road vehicles that should have been seized were not, such as defective vehicles and those driven by people with several convictions. I have evidence on this which I will present to the Minister. In Monaghan a young boy was killed two years ago by a car that had been stopped an hour earlier. It had no road tax. The drugs squad stopped it looking for drugs. The driver was not fit to drive the car but the drugs squad made an assessment. I welcome the fact that we can now test for drugs. The gentleman, a foreign national, had 40 charges North and South. He killed a young Monaghan man. He mowed over him, drove off and left the scene. He went home to his wife and told her he had knocked down somebody, but by the time he was tested it was too late. The law is not administered fairly.

I will not discuss penalty points like the previous speaker. They are needed in many cases and we must deal with it. We must be pragmatic and have some common sense. We should start with our roads. Visitors from other countries cannot believe the road safety issue. The roads have been closed in. For his own sake, the Minister should be aware that roads that can dry out with the wind and sun will last much longer than a road that stays damp, because when the frost comes it erodes the surface.

Gardaí go to schools to speak to pupils, but they should be brought out for practical experience to be taught how to drive. I am in favour of dealing with learner drivers when they start out but we are not all geniuses. People in my constituency cannot get past the theory test and cannot get a licence. Some of these people had licences that expired. I am not ashamed to say this. I have represented people who were educated at a different time and may have dyslexia or dyspraxia or they are not computer-literate. One chap I know almost passed it the first time he did it, but has now done it 18 times and gets worse and worse because he gets very nervous and frustrated at the idea of it. We should consider such people when we draft legislation. We must think of those who cannot deal with situations such as this. We must be conscious that we are not all computer-literate whizz kids like the young people.

Changes have been made with regard to taxi regulations. I am all for vehicle roadworthiness tests but I am not in favour of an age limit for cars. We tried it here and put many businesses into debt. We must remember the economy; people cannot afford to change cars. Taxis must pass two tests, namely, the NCT and a measurement test, which is normally done in a hotel.

The test measures the capability of the car to carry people, and I am all for that as well. However, why put them off the road? They have good cars with good life left in them but they are not able to continue their business, which is very difficult. I appeal to the Minister, as I, Deputy Healy-Rae and others did last week and the week before, to ask his colleague, the Minister, Deputy Hogan, to intervene in the situation which came to a head yesterday evening. We passed that legislation here months ago but there was no public awareness until three or four weeks ago when the campaign and the advertisements began.

People who want to comply are not able to comply. I have heard of some appalling cases, including that of a 70 year old man travelling to a centre in the country yesterday to collect two combines he had bought. The combines were bought in 1977 off Mahon and McPhillips, which the Acting Chairman might remember and which has long gone out of business. None the less, they insisted he had to have invoices, which of course was not possible. They demanded photographs of the front, rear and both sides of the machines, with the chassis number also identified by photograph, rightly so. However, they then wanted to know the number of hours on the clock. What difference would that make given combines are only used for a month at most and perhaps for only ten days in the year? In any case, most speedometers and clocks on agricultural machines do not work due to dust and dirt, as they are not covered like those in cars. To get a clear photograph of them is impossible.

The legislation is making ridiculous requests. That man could not tax his machines. He called in to me when he came back. He waited ten days for an appointment to go down and then went there yesterday. He had sat up until 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. the night before, getting everything ready, then he went down and was just dismissed, literally, because he had not this, that and the other. Where is he going to get an invoice? The company is long since gone, so he is not going to get an invoice from it. These are still working machines, while they would be classified as vintage. I contacted the county council and was told he is going to have to back-tax them to 1977, which will cost thousands.

I know this is a racket to collect money, but it is wrong to be so naked and bullish about it, and to be so intimidating of ordinary business people and farmers, including elderly retired people. Legislation must be sensitive to the people. There must an awareness campaign and, above all, an impact assessment should be carried out in regard to its implications. It is fine to pass legislation here, send it off to the Bills Office and then send it off to the Seanad. We will soon not have a Seanad to find many things. To be fair, it has found 520 or 530 anomalies in legislation in the last two and a half years and sent them back to this House. Most of the time this made no headlines and the Ministers, their advisers and the drafters accepted the changes. That is one benefit of the Seanad. We passed four Bills in this House on the last day before the holidays. How is any Deputy going to be up to speed with that? I believe it is a retrograde step.

Above all, the fact is the public are getting a raw deal from us all the time. We are elected and we then come in here to a kind of bubble. To hell or Connacht was Cromwell's attitude, but for the Ministers, Deputy Varadkar, Deputy Shatter and Big Phil, it is to hell or wherever. It is a case of croppies lie down or peasants lie down. I tell the Minister that they will not lie down. They will be out there. There will be a fine vote next Friday against it, but there will be a worse vote when Ministers come knocking on the doors in the local elections-----

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