Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on the Bill. Deputy Broughan has been pursuing it like a dog with a bone for years and I commend him on his efforts. There are many inadequacies in the system and that should not be the case. While the Bill is trying to deal with them, we must consider other areas. The Minister is examining enforcement and the wording of summonses. We get a so-called clever or industrious solicitor or barrister. I mean no disrespect to my good colleague, Deputy O'Callaghan, in his new job here. We hear there is a good fellow in Mallow or a great fellow in Tipperary and that either one is able to deal with it. They come at enormous cost. Sometimes they produce the goods by holding up whoever is acting on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP. Our legal representatives have a role to play in respect of road safety. They sure do. It is not a case of defending the indefensible. They must have some moral standing and know that right is right and wrong is wrong. It does not mean that a person is clever or ingenious if they can get somebody off the hook for a heinous crime.

According to the figures, last year was shocking in terms of what happened on our roads. The variations in the failures to serve summonses in different areas throughout the country beggars belief. I am not trying to single out any gardaí for any reason. It is difficult now. At one time, we all knew everybody who lived in our communities, as the Minister of State would know, given that he comes from a rural constituency. This has vastly changed and we do not know where people reside. It is very difficult. During the past 15 months, batches of summonses were not delivered. The figures were quoted by others. It is amazing to see. How can one area be so good?

The PULSE system is not up to standard. The severe lack of investment in the Garda Síochána regarding numbers and, above all, equipment, during the past ten years is taking its toll. Several Garda stations in my area have no PULSE system and scarcely any Internet coverage. We can keep the Garda stations open and I am a great advocate that there is no replacement for the garda on the beat, in situ, in the station. Gardaí get to know the people. There is an excellent garda, Niall O'Halloran, in my area. He has got in there in the past few years and has got to know the people. He attends matches in the area and is involved in young people's sport. He is also involved with the community alert and text alert systems and people know him. There is no replacement for that. Gardaí from 20 miles away who arrive in a squad car will not get the same co-operation from people. Like the parish priest, if one stands in people's kitchens, one will have a full chapel. They must get down and meet the people, and they must be allowed to do it. There is no point appointing a token garda responsible for districts and the community alert person if he or she is not left there but is always pulled back into the town. While I know they are needed there, country people are also entitled to their service.

Use of the poor box in courts has been criticised. It is at the discretion of the justices. Many very needy organisations benefit greatly from it and would have been in fierce trouble over the years if they had not. Practice varied in different court areas, depending on who was sitting. That is fine. They are entitled to make the decision.

I cannot believe the figures supplied to PARC on the number of licences that were not surrendered by people who were put off the roads. What kind of court system and lack of communication is there? If a person is put off the road, I would have thought his or her licence would have to be proffered there and then in court. I am delighted PARC does such good work. This is a major area. It is shocking that people are driving without licences, particularly as this means that they have no insurance either.

Deputy Broughan mentioned the figures on those involved in serious and fatal accidents who have been banned from driving. I believe those people should never be let on the roads again because they are so reckless to have driven without a licence or insurance. I accept that a driver has to have a licence to get insurance but there must be some follow-up. Modern IT systems allow for cross-compliance in agriculture, as the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, is aware, and in everything else too. The figures show there is one garda for every 300 people and one agricultural official for every 30 people, so there are a lot more agricultural officials. The Minister of State is wincing but those figures stand up, although they might have changed in recent years. We need a modern, up-to-date system linking the courts, the Garda Pulse system and Garda patrol cars. Some of the newer traffic corps vehicles have high-spec equipment, but only very few. More are needed, particularly given the huge increase in the level of crime and the number of burglaries. Gardaí need to be able to check cars using cameras. I have seen how well these cameras work and how they can tell if a car has passed its NCT and so on.

I support the Minister, Deputy Ross, in dealing with the many road safety issues. In some areas, however, he is looking in the wrong place. One fatality is one too many, and to have had 188 last year on the roads is appalling. However, it is not all down to one issue; there are several factors at work. The Rural Independent Group had a debate two weeks ago on the standard of the roads and the deterioration of their surfaces. Although we have had a very good winter, the weather was inclement recently and I heard appeals to drivers on RTE radio to be careful because of the damage to the road surfaces. That is also a huge issue.

We need to deal with the law preventing the cutting of hedges, which is pure nonsense. To quote Deputy Danny Healy-Rae, there is no bird foolish enough to nest on the side of the road where there are lorries passing, so they go well into the fields to nest. I am involved with the Association of Farm Contractors Ireland and we have been lobbying for years to allow the hedges to be cut. We discussed this in the talks on the programme for Government last year but, lo and behold, we have to get permission from the county council. Why can we not just have permission in the interests of road safety and of saving lives? When a tractor is coming out of a field, it is probably 7 ft. out of the field before the cab is out and it could be 10 ft. if there is an implement on the front of the tractor. There could be 5 ft. of scrub and bush that is nothing but rubbish. If it is cut clean, the birds would have plenty of time to mate and hatch in the fields. I am all for our bird species but it is ridiculous how the Wildlife Acts are directly impeding road safety. It is contradictory as well as being unsafe and unwise. Farmers will cut the hedges.

There is also legislation governing tree felling. Every landowner should be instructed to cut the trees. The councils are like a dog in a manger; they will not cut them themselves and they will not instruct the farmers. In spite of the change in legislation, we have to get permission from the council to allow us to cut them.

The Minister, Deputy Ross, has to examine many areas of road safety. It is not as simple as pointing to speed or to country drivers because there are many factors. While I am not against speed cameras, the figures released by the Department of Justice and Equality in August 2016 revealed that the State spent almost €88 million on the enforcement of private speed vans in the space of five years. I see these vans as a money collecting and money making operation, although that is not a criticism. I had occasion to contact one of the vans recently when I was contacted because a van was close to a wake that was taking place. I knocked on the van door and made my point to the man, and he left because it was a huge local funeral and people were distressed at the idea of him being there. In fairness, that is the only interaction I have had with them. Thankfully, I have not received any fines as it turns out I am not a fast driver. However, I never see them in the places where there are fatal accidents. I have appealed to the Garda to put up checkpoints and speed cameras at serious bends and dangerous stretches of road but it has not happened. They are put in trick-of-the-loop places and the vans are sitting in the towns in 80 km/h, 60 km/h and 50 km/h zones. Quite honestly, drivers do not know where they are and they are getting fooled.

The figures show the State paid the private safety camera operators the phenomenal sum of €87,951,268 from the time they were deployed in 2010 to 22 July last year, while they recouped just €32,689,120 in fines during that same time. What if that money was invested in the Garda? Those figures need to be seriously examined, given the hardship imposed on people driving to work and so on. While I am not condoning speeding, where drivers are a couple of kilometres per hour over the limit in 80 km/h, 60 km/h and 50 km/h zones, there should be some latitude, particularly as the signage is not great.

There has been recent investment, including in CLÁR areas, which I welcome. For example, flashing lights and signs telling drivers their speed are located on the edges of villages and towns. This is very effective and the new schemes mean the community can be involved in erecting these signs, which can be moved around as needed. This is very important. There is no doubting the impact of the safety camera regime on reducing road fatalities and accidents, particularly in areas that have been blighted by these incidents over the years, and I am not suggesting that they be removed entirely. Accountability is needed, however, given the amount of taxpayers' money required to run them, the amount of money coming back in and the question of who is making the profits. As I said, I seriously question where they are located. I am sure the Minister of State has seen them located in silly places whereas, in places where there have been multiple fatalities, I am told it is too dangerous for the cameras to be located. It can be dangerous but there are areas where a safe location can be found, such as at Duggan's bends near Cahir, but for some reason they are not located there.

In each year from 2012 to 2015 it cost the State more than €17 million to maintain the contract, with a cost of almost €16 million in 2011. These contracts are ridiculous and not fit for purpose but they are lucrative. While I welcome the issues of road safety raised in this debate, we need to do more. For the period from 2010 to date, revenue generated from the safety camera contract has totalled more than €32 million, despite all the millions pumped in. This means that there is just more than €54 million in the difference between the operation of the contract and the revenue that it creates. We need a much more detailed conversation around how the money might be better spent, in particular in terms of robustly resourcing the Garda traffic corps.

I want to salute the Garda traffic corps, which operates under Inspector Eddie Golden in my area of Tipperary. I know many of its members, who work hard and who have got involved in visiting schools and visiting farmers on mart days. They have open nights and open days and they have met with the Association of Farm Contractors Ireland. They have discussed changes to many pieces of legislation, which has been very beneficial. I have learned much from them, such as the correct towing of trailers, the correct axle weights and so on. We cannot get enough of that. What we badly need is a programme for transition year students. I have seen an excellent programme in the Abbey school in Tipperary town, where the students take lessons on a track around a field. This gives them great confidence and is money well spent, given they are the drivers of tomorrow. They need to be educated differently from the way we were educated because the roads are so busy now. No one is taking account of the ten-fold multiplication in the volume of traffic in recent years. While it is never mentioned, it is a huge issue. We need to have those training courses and we need the traffic corps and ordinary gardaí visiting the schools.

I am disappointed the Bill has not addressed the issue of pedestrians being killed on the roads. When it is dark, no one can see them. It is frightening but I come across it every winter. When a person is driving along the road, they see something and they might get time to swerve or they might not. It should be compulsory to wear reflective jackets in the winter months. We need to be creative in this regard. I am sure the RSA spends a lot of money producing these jackets but we have to produce reflective jackets that young people will wear.

We see them wearing all kinds of things now, especially at Christmas, with flashing lights on gansies and rudaí mar sin. We see all kinds of creative writing, different branding and different T-shirts made with all kinds of equipment. Why can we not be creative in order that it will be cool to wear this because it is vital? I often see kids getting off school buses. Thank God, the evenings are bright now but before and since Christmas, I see kids getting off buses and alighting onto the road. It is black and they do not seem to understand. They have big heavy schools bags. They struggle across the road with the weight of them. They cannot even run with them. That is another area that has to be addressed. Why can we not have school bags with flashing lights? We can have them on everything. As they can be bought in shops to wear as armbands, why can they not be a compulsory part of school uniform or school fleeces? They can be nice and trendy and cool to wear and they will be safe. Surely road safety is more important than any uniform.

There is trauma for a driver when he or she hits somebody like that. There is trauma for the person who is hit but for the driver also, who is totally innocent and unable to avoid the accident because somebody walked in front of him or her in the road wearing black clothes. The Minister, Deputy Shane Ross, and his officials in the RSA need to focus on that issue also. They need to get down and dirty and go out and consult in the communities. They should consult the students. They can be very creative. They could have competitions as we often have in our community LEP group. Every year we have a community LEP competition, the young people make Christmas cards, and the ideas that come up are just fascinating. They must be consulted and engaged with. There must be areas for the tests they do. They are very good. The RSA and the Garda do them.

There have been startling revelations about the impact of an accident and the importance of wearing a safety belt if a person crashes. We are not fully aware of it ourselves. We should support the traffic corps and give it more resources and power. The investment in speed vans needs to be examined. They are a bit of a money making racket and are not in areas they should be. I am not blaming the people who operate them. They have a job to do. It is very lonely. There have been attacks on a number of them when there should not have been. It is a very lonely job sitting there for hours in those vans. I often thought there was nobody in them but there is.

We need to take an holistic approach. We need to have more co-operation between the Department of Justice and Equality, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport and the Courts Service. It is pretty efficient at handing out repossession orders and everything else when it suits, but how can there not be basic tracking for licenses? If one is disqualified from driving, one's licence should be handed up that day. If not, gardaí should be empowered to collect it within so many days. There must be a system like that. They have spent so much time collecting fines. That is a pure farce because there should be some other way of collecting a fine rather than wasting Garda time doing it. We should be efficient and let gardaí concentrate on road safety and dealing with criminals. That is what they are if they have been banned and have caused a serious accident or fatality when driving while banned.

There will need to be connectivity here, especially in the areas I mentioned. Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh siad. The young people will learn. Many people have criticised young drivers who drive with L-plates without a qualified driver. It is not always possible. I am not condoning it but we should get some other system. The way it is going in rural Ireland, we will have fewer buses and trains. I have to credit some insurance companies such as Aviva and others that offer certain discounts if one does tests with them. Young people go out and get the car and the provisional licence, do the theory test, do all the lessons, pass the test, put up their N-plates, drive and then go for insurance but the cost is sky-rocketing. The insurance companies must be brought to heel. They are not respecting the young people who do all that with enormous cost to their parents and enormous interest, passion and courage themselves. They learn how to drive, get their licence and celebrate, which is great, then put up their N-plates and cannot get insurance or are penalised with policies of €8,000, €9,000 or €10,000. It is just not fair. If they go off and do some mad things like break speed limits and crash, then we should penalise them but when they have their certificates and their training, which is more than we got when we started driving, and they have it recorded and have their N-plates up, they should not be screwed the way they are for insurance. Their parents cannot afford it. Where will the money come from in the country? They have to go to college. They have to go to mass. They have to go to games. We do not have the DART or Luas or what they have in Dublin. The Road Safety Authority needs to focus on many other areas, with the Department of Justice and Equality to deal with this problem holistically, not pigeon-holing people and blaming them unnecessarily.

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