David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. It is important legislation. Any Bill or legislation that addresses the issue of road safety is to be welcomed. Like Teachta Munster, I also wish to commend and pay tribute to all of those who work in the area of road safety, whether it is enforcement, planning or advocacy. That includes An Garda Síochána, the RSA, all of those who advocate for road safety and change as well as members of the traffic core and An Garda Síochána who do their jobs as well. There is also a role, as we know, for the local authorities that do a lot of work in planning in these areas of traffic management, traffic safety and so on. I also praise the work of the Minister in this area. It is not something he is getting much of at the moment, for justifiable reasons in some areas. This is, as I understand, the first Bill he has brought before the House. It is the first that I have seen at least. Fair play to the Minister for that. It is a important legislation.

I think we can all accept that the penalty points system changed people's attitudes and the culture around how we see road safety. As we know, people previously received a fine and paid the financial side of it - the €50, €60, €80 or whatever it was as it changed - and that was it. There was no other sanction. That was not good enough because it was not a strong deterrent. Once we introduced the penalty points system, it had a significant effect. It is always welcome that we keep that system under review to see if it is fair, robust and working and to see whether we are changing people's attitudes and cultural attitudes towards different issues. We have seen this happen with regard to drink-driving. It is not simply in regard to deterrents or sanctions, be they penalty points or anything else. Education, raising awareness and behavioural changes associated with it are equally as important as the deterrent measures. We should at all times keep under review the effectiveness of the penalty points system.

One of the issues that we need to do much more work on - those of us who travel by road a lot see it all the time - is the use of mobile telephones and people doing all sorts of acrobatic movements as they try to send texts or read what is on their telephones. It is a huge distraction. It is possibly even more dangerous than speeding because people are taking their eye off the road. Every millisecond that one is not looking at the road and looking at a device instead is very dangerous. The Minister, the RSA and the Department are always looking at this issue. I have seen advertisements on television in recent times in which the use of mobile telephones features more prominently. It is justifiable because it is a dangerous practice.

With regard to local authorities, I spent seven years on Waterford City Council. I remember when the allocation would come in for speed ramps. What used to happen was that the councillors would decide where the speed ramps would go. It was not based on need, on whether they were in the right or wrong place or on whether it was necessarily for a particular part of the city. There was no real or coherent policy. It differed across local authorities. My experience at the time was that it was done because a particular councillor might have been lobbied by a particular housing association chairperson, or whoever it was, and it was allocated on that basis. What we need to look at is not the volume of speed ramps that we have in estates but rather whether that is the best use of money in the first place and whether it works and acts as a deterrent. As the Minister knows, we have moved away from speed ramps to speed tables, chicanes and different types of approaches. Consistency in local authorities across the State and having an over-arching policy of best practice that guides them in how they spend money that is allocated for road safety measures would be a much better way to approach the issue.

I wish to deal with a number of other issues which may not be directly related to this Bill but are very important to road safety. We know from the Department's ministerial briefing that our roads network is suffering from chronic under-investment. The Government's own five-year investment plan that was launched to much fanfare last year will do little in the first four years to actively address capacity and safety issues.

Before I get into the need to upgrade our road system, another problem we have on our roads is fatigue. We have a number of pull-in areas where people can pull in and rest. However, there are some stretches of motorway on which we do not have service areas. One such example is the M9 from Waterford to Dublin. There was no service area at one point. One could not pull into a garage to have a cup of coffee or whatever. One had to pull off at Carlow or another exit and drive for ten minutes before one arrived at a petrol station. Of course, if that was at night time, the petrol station was closed. There is now one service area but it is not very visible and there is no proper signage. That is important as well because if people are tired and need to rest, the services have to be there, especially on long stretches of motorway.

There is a need to invest in the capital side of road infrastructure. It is stated in the Minister's own briefing which states:

The first 4 years of the plan offer very little additional funding for the Department's capital programme. The bulk of this funding is already committed to delivering existing projects (LUAS, PPPs, etc) and as such, there is no room for any new projects.

While those projects are all very welcome, that is an incredible statement for any Department make. The Minister's partners in Government, Fine Gael, made great play out of saying that we have turned a corner and need to "Keep the recovery going", as it was put. In fact, we are running to a standstill in terms of our crumbling regional and local road network.

In many areas across the country - I can give the Minister numerous examples in my own constituency of Waterford in county areas - roads were washed away because of floods and bad weather conditions, yet the local authorities do not have the money to upgrade and repair them. That has an impact on road safety. If one has a car that may not be familiar with an area, is travelling at 40 km/h, 50 km/h or 60 km/h and approaches a section of road that has essentially fallen away or subsided and on which there are craters - I would not even say potholes - in some areas, it is a road safety issue. The need to invest in these areas is obvious. I listened to the Minister many times when he was in Opposition calling for more capital investment. Now that he is sitting in the hot seat of the ministerial chair, he has a unique opportunity to be able to put into practice what he preached for a long time. He preached it very well, in fairness. We now need to see delivery and real investment in this area.

The impact of chronic under-investment has been increasingly evident in the degradation of the transport network. The 2015 capital ceiling for land transport represented 0.6% of GDP, which is half the level of our international peers and of the historic norms in Ireland. The ministerial briefing also goes on to say that "it provides for only 53% of necessary maintenance works on our regional and local roads". In other words, at a time when the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, is saying that the crisis is over and it is time for tax cuts and so on, we are not investing in our road network, which has been starved of funding. We do not even have the funding to cover essential repairs on more than half of the road network. Those are not my words, they are the words of the ministerial briefing that was given to the Minister when he came into the job.

There is a lot more that we need to do to raise awareness of road safety. I believe that we are doing a lot of good work. There are many education programmes and good work being done by agencies, outside groups and advocates. All of that is very important. The introduction of the penalty point system has been very good and is very effective in acting as a deterrent. There is a lot of good work being done by all of those people I spoke about earlier. We have come a long way.

We have turned the corner in terms of doing our best on education and sanctions, although we could always do more in that regard.

I welcome the provisions of the Bill related to people who are driving under the influence of drugs and other measures that will increase the number of offences and give An Garda Síochána greater power to do what it needs to do. While all of this is necessary, the Minister will agree that we must also invest in the road network and ensure our roads are of good quality and the services road users require are provided. If we do not invest in the road network and wash its face, as the expression goes, decay will set in and we will pay a higher cost in the long run. As any chief executive of a local authority would tell the Minister, roads have been starved of capital investment for years. Failure to invest in maintaining and upgrading roads will generate greater costs in the long run, which would not make economic sense.

I appeal to the Minister to use his influence to try to win as much support as possible for increased capital investment in the road network in the upcoming budget and subsequent budgets. I commend him on the Bill.

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