Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will meet the group with the Deputy. It might not be in the immediate future, but we will meet in the coming months about this.

My overall concern is the difficulty of enforcing a law which might well give a short-term benefit, because it would likely lead to a rise in awareness of the matter if such a law were to be implemented, but in the medium to long term that could be diluted by challenges in enforcing it. The Deputy made the point that the Garda said it could not respond to the incident the Deputy described because it needed a witness or proof. Unfortunately, that illustrates the type of difficulty we face when we seek to implement primary law. Once something is enumerated in primary law, the burden of proof is high. That is why there is a challenge with this matter, which we can discuss.

The "Stayin' Alive at 1.5" campaign makes reference to a law which was implemented in Queensland from the middle of April 2014 for a two year period. This puts in place a minimum distance of 1 m when passing cyclists in a 60 km/h or less speed zone and 1.5 m when the speed limit is over 60 km/h. This law is the first of its kind in Australia and it might well be appropriate to look at the impact of that law and see what evidence it has yielded. The Road Safety Authority has indicated that it will examine practice in this area in other countries.

I see that Deputy Cannon is present and I am aware that he is very interested in this matter. He has raised it with me previously. Perhaps the meeting we have referred to is something we could approach together. I have outlined the challenges that exist but with Deputy Doherty and Deputy Cannon we can engage with the group on the matter.

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