Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I echo the comments made by Deputy Seamus Healy on finishing the Bill tonight.

It is so important to get the key elements of this Bill on the Statute Book as an additional armoury for the Garda Síochána and the RSA. I hope the Minister will continue to work for a consolidated traffic law to bring together the key elements of law. He stated this is a difficult area and perhaps it needs to be simplified and codified better so that no citizen, garda, member of the RSA or anybody else would be in any doubt as to what are the provisions of the traffic law.

I support strongly Deputy Munster's amendments Nos. 4 and 5. Approximately 18 years ago, I proposed, at Dublin City Council, that we would have something similar to the home zones which the Netherlands and some of our other European neighbours have, where on going into an estate, the speed limit reduces to what in those days was 25 mph or approximately 30 km/h. The roll-out so far, recently, by Dublin City Council, of the speed limit of 30 km/h or 50 km/h between the canals, is valuable. Every driver should know precisely what the speed limit is and it should be clear on every road on which one travels. That is the work of the local authorities. Also, in a previous traffic Bill, I helped to insert a 40 km/h limit - the old 25 mph limit. Local authorities should not be afraid of using that and I support those amendments.

With Deputy Healy, I warmly welcome the members of the Promoting Awareness Responsibility and Care, PARC, road safety campaigning group which is in the Gallery, in particular, Ms Susan Gray, Ms Ann Fogarty, Mr. Noel Clancy, Ms Fiona Clancy, Mr. Declan Clancy, Mr. Alec Lee, Mr. David Walsh, Ms Louise Doyle, Mr. John Fleming and Mr. James Regan who have campaigned so hard for so many of the measures that are coming forward in this Bill.

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