Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

This Bill is about saving lives. I am introducing to the House a short but very important Bill. It is designed to address a specific failing in our current legislation on drink-driving. We all know that alcohol and driving do not mix. Drink driving is one of the most serious causes of collisions, injuries and fatalities on our roads. No one disputes that. There is also general agreement that the law must be firm on drink-driving. It must take drink-driving seriously and it must be seen to take it seriously. It is now seven years since the law on drink-driving was comprehensively revised and updated. The legislation involved - the Road Traffic Act 2010 - has generally served us well. It provides a framework of graded offences. At the most serious are cases where people are, as the law states, under the influence of an intoxicant to such an extent as to be incapable of controlling the vehicle. These are cases where a person has drink or drugs taken and can be proven to be impaired and unable to control the vehicle. Also serious, but a lesser offence, is being over a specified limit of alcohol. In this case, the offence is driving or being in charge of a mechanically propelled vehicle while over the alcohol limit. There is no requirement to prove impairment. One of the big controversies in 2010 was that the alcohol limit was being lowered. We were told this was excessive and that it would destroy social life in the country. It was not and it has not. On the contrary, lower alcohol limits have contributed to saving lives and have helped to impress on people the dangers of drinking and driving. Even a small amount of alcohol can impact on driver’s reaction time and hazard perception. While drivers in this situation may not have obvious impairment, the impact of alcohol on their reactions could be the difference between life and death.

The law on drink-driving which we introduced in 2010 contains a significant flaw. There was a general principle which was supposed to apply to drink-driving and to all serious road traffic offences. Committing a serious offence was destined to lead to a period of disqualification from driving. In spite of this principle, it was decided in 2010 - to appease publican lobby groups - to allow some drinkers found over the legal limit to escape disqualification. This is a tragic mistake. Such appeasement of a powerful lobby, such as the publicans, cannot be right. Either any drink-driving over the legal limit is a serious matter or it is not. If it is, how can we not have a disqualification? We disqualify people who drive dangerously or carelessly. We disqualify people for driving dangerously defective vehicles. We disqualify people for dangerous parking during lighting up hours. Ireland has had a mixed record in recent years. We even disqualify people for driving without insurance. What possible rationale can there be for saying to some people who drive while over the legal alcohol limit that we are not going to disqualify them? Do we really mean to say that a person driving on a road while over the alcohol limit is less of an immediate danger to public safety than someone who is parking dangerously? Are they posing less of a danger to public safety than someone who has no insurance? The fact that it is only some people in this position who get the exemption from disqualification serves to underline the fact that driving when over the limit merits disqualification. The law already recognises that this offence should normally attract disqualification. There is no logic to the proposition that in some cases some people should get a waiver on the disqualification and be allowed to pay a €200 fine, get three penalty points and drive on as if nothing had happened.

I will put this issue in a broader context. It is almost a cliché in the area of road safety that there are many factors involved and many different measures needed in order to promote road safety. It is a cliché because it is true. Ireland’s current road safety strategy, as its predecessors, sets out actions across a whole range of areas which must be addressed if we are to achieve what we all want, which is to make our roads safer and to reduce deaths and injuries on our roads. Deputies will know that Ireland has a mixed record in the last few years on road safety. For a good many years road deaths were dropping from the peak of 472 in 1997 to the historic low of 162 in 2012. Since then, we have seen fluctuations. There was a significant increase in 2013, a smaller increase in 2014, a drop to 162 in 2015 and an increase again in 2016. Current indicators are of a very welcome drop in the number of deaths for 2017 with today’s figure standing at 133, which is 31 fewer fatalities than the same period in 2016. That is still 133 too many.

Many of the major issues to be addressed have been addressed. The NCT has helped to ensure vehicle standards are higher and driver training has improved. The introduction of penalty points in 2002 and the strengthening of the penalty points system have all had an impact on people's behaviour. Many more measures are in train under the road safety strategy and will continue to be so in the future. Road safety, as I have said many times, should not be a matter of politics or of ideology. It should be an issue that crosses party lines. We all agree on the goal of making our roads safer and most of the time we agree on the means. There are debates and disagreements, but they are over practicalities, whether a particular measure will work, or how it can be made to work better.

For the many factors involved in road safety and in road deaths, we must have many measures, which we do. The road safety strategy continues to address vehicle standards, driver education and enforcement. In all of these areas we need and do have continuing efforts, not least because as the number of road deaths has gone down, the causes behind those remaining deaths are more intractable.

Drink-driving has always been one of the major factors in road traffic collisions. The RSA has found that alcohol is a factor in 38% of road deaths, a figure which is based on coroners’ reports into road deaths. We should think about that figure of 38%. In spite of what we know about drink-driving and all of the public awareness campaigns, alcohol is still a factor in more than a third of road traffic deaths.

Last year when the Irish Examinerand the ICMSA commissioned an opinion survey on this issue, almost 23% of those polled admitted to driving after three or more pints. I believe anyone would conclude that the real figure must be higher, if we include those who drink and drive but do not admit it. Even a figure of nearly 23% is disturbingly high. Particularly worrying is that research by the RSA and separate research by the AA have shown that drink-driving is increasing among younger drivers. That is a surprise but it is the truth.

Drink-driving is not just dangerous; it continues to be a significant factor in road deaths in Ireland. It is a problem which is growing. Not many years ago it had become commonplace to say rather smugly that we were witnessing a culture change, that drink-driving was no longer socially acceptable. If that was true, it is not any longer. The trend is reversing and we need to get it back on course. How can we do so if the very law we make treats some drink-driving cases as not being serious enough to merit the smallest disqualification?

The Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill 2017 deals with one very specific and very important amendment. It will remove the provision of the Road Traffic Act 2010 - a provision which should never have been introduced - which allows some people who drive while over the alcohol limit to get away without any disqualification. This provision is bad in itself, because it treats a serious offence as if it is not serious. It is worse if we remember that it sends a message that the law does not take "a little drink-driving" seriously.

Let me remind the House what the provision in section 29 of the 2010 Act states. Section 29 deals with drivers other than learners, novices, and professional drivers. Offences concerned with alcohol limits divide in seriousness according to the amount of alcohol a person has in his or her blood, breath or urine. Section 29 applies to people who have up to 100 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood or are in the equivalent brackets for breath or urine. Under section 29, these people are first served with a fixed-penalty notice, rather than with a summons to court. This offers an administrative system as an alternative to court proceedings, with which I have no difficulty.

The problem arises with the consequences for drivers. Under section 29, if a person is between 80 and 100 mg per 100 ml they get a six-month disqualification. If they are between 50 and 80 mg per 100 ml, they can choose to accept three penalty points. Let us consider what this means. It takes 12 penalty points for someone to get a six-month disqualification. I am quite happy to accept that the consequence of being in a lower bracket of alcohol should be lower but the law as it stands provides that a person in the lower bracket is not automatically disqualified and gets three points, or a quarter of what it takes to reach a disqualification under the penalty point system. How can that be justified as a consequence of driving above the legal amount of alcohol taken?

The Bill will remove this anomaly. In place of the relatively trivial three penalty points, there will be a three-month disqualification. This is a short period but it is a disqualification. It is short because it is in the lowest bracket of those over the alcohol limit. Anything less would simply say - as the law so regrettably does at present - that a little alcohol over the legal limit before driving is not a serious matter.

The Bill has provoked a great deal of comment. It has been strongly supported by road-safety advocacy groups including the Irish Road Victims Association and the PARC Road Safety Group. The Road Safety Authority, the Automobile Association and Drinkaware have also been strongly supportive. A survey of public opinion conducted just after this proposal was announced found that 91% of the public supported the view that there should be automatic disqualification for all drivers detected driving over the limit. Deputies may be interested to note that these figures broke down into 93% in rural areas and 89% in urban areas.

While there has been support from victims groups, road safety advocates and the public at large, there has also been criticism. Some of the initial criticisms were based on a misunderstanding, which has hopefully been cleared up. Some people seemed to think that the Bill would lower the alcohol limits further. That was never the intention and hopefully that message has been made clear. The Bill will not lower the alcohol limits; it will ensure proper consequences for people who breach the existing limits.

There have been those who claimed that this Bill will not save a single life. They could not be more wrong. To give an idea of the scale of the issue, in the years from 2012 to 2016 inclusive, 3,003 fixed-penalty notices issued to drink-drivers in the 51 mg to 80 mg alcohol concentration bracket. This is the number of people facing the prospect of penalty points instead of a disqualification. Not only is it a significant number but there was a notable increase during 2016. This fits with other evidence of a reversal in the previous trend towards people seeing drink-driving as unacceptable.

There is also the question of actual deaths. The RSA has found that between 2008 and 2012 at least 35 people died in collisions where drivers had alcohol levels at between 21 mg and 80 mg. Of these, 16 were in the 50 mg to 80 mg range. If we had taken drink-driving, even at what we call low levels, more seriously, these 16 people might be alive. How can people claim that ensuring proper consequences for drink-driving at these levels will not save lives? They may say that drink-driving is not the only issue, or that this Bill does not address every aspect of drink-driving, but no one ever claimed that it did. What it does is address a serious flaw in our current law. It will make sure that what is already illegal will carry the consequences it should.

There is also the question of how we address the culture change we so badly need. This Bill alone will not solve the problem of drink-driving as a growing phenomenon but it will help a great deal to underline that drink-driving is never acceptable, and if we leave the law as it is, that law will continue to puncture arguments against drink-driving because the law of the land will continue to say that a little alcohol before driving is no great harm.

Most of the opposition to this Bill has, as Deputies will by now be aware, come from people who argue that it will somehow undermine social life in rural areas. The Bill has been presented as an urban versus rural issue. None of this stands up to examination. I have already mentioned the survey which found overwhelming support across the country. This is not surprising; rural Ireland has suffered disproportionately from alcohol-related road deaths. Some 81% of alcohol-related road deaths occur in rural Ireland. Those who portray this Bill as an attack on rural Ireland are missing the point. We want to save lives in rural Ireland. When the alcohol limit was being lowered in 2010, many of the same arguments were put.

The fundamental mistake of those critics who say that this Bill will damage rural Ireland is that they are conflating two very different issues. One is drink-driving, which is a public safety issue, and an issue on which I want to protect the public everywhere, in all areas, rural and urban. The other and entirely separate issue is the problem of social isolation in rural Ireland. These two issues are different and those who would treat them as one issue do a disservice to both.

We know that rural Ireland does not have the concentration of public transport that more densely populated areas do. The Government fully appreciates that there is a particular problem as people get older in socialising in rural Ireland. The Government has decided to explore ways of addressing social isolation in rural areas. I invited a wide range of organisations, State, private and voluntary, to meet me in September to explore ways in which we can address the problem of social isolation in rural Ireland. I am happy to say that there was a broad shared agreement on the problems and that a number of initiatives in this area are now being explored. I have already invited the stakeholders to a second meeting this month.

I wish to bring to the attention of Deputies my intention to introduce on Committee Stage amendments to strengthen the law with regard to learner drivers who are driving unaccompanied by a qualified person. There is strong support in the House for the strengthening of the law in this area and for the commencement of section 39 of the Road Traffic Act 2016, which for legal reasons I have been unable to commence. I am confident that I will finally be in a position to commence this section with the amendments I am proposing and to introduce a law which is robust and enforceable. I want to bring to an end the all-too-common practice of learner permit holders driving unaccompanied by a qualified person.

I shall also bring forward an amendment to assist An Garda Síochána in dealing with unaccompanied learner drivers by amending section 41 of the Road Traffic Act 1994, which allows the Garda to detain, store, release or dispose of vehicles in certain circumstances. These include cases where the vehicle is untaxed or uninsured or where the driver has been disqualified. I intend to propose adding to these cases circumstances where the driver is an unaccompanied learner. This will be an effective tool in removing the immediate danger from the roads and will also be a strong deterrent to unaccompanied learner driving.

I urge the House to support the Bill and in so doing to make our law on drink-driving more robust and our roads safer. It really is as straightforward as that. I ask the House to listen to the voices of the road-safety experts and the road-safety advocates and victims groups who have all strongly supported this proposal. Many of them are in the Gallery and I salute them.

Some may say that there are other matters which need addressing and, of course, there are. Road safety is a goal we must and do pursue on a range of fronts and numerous initiatives are under way in line with the road safety strategy. However, how can we address any issue properly if we make laws which do not apply serious consequences to seriously dangerous behaviour?

How can we expect drivers who would risk their own safety and that of others to be deterred if they know that the consequences would not be serious?

In the months leading up to the debate today members of road safety advocacy groups, people who have lost family members and friends in road collisions involving alcohol, have contacted many of the Members of this House to ask them to support this Bill. They know, from sad experience, that every life matters, that there can be no acceptable level of collateral damage where drink-driving is concerned. Their bravery in putting their own losses aside in order to work for the safety of others can only be hugely applauded.

We talk of a need for culture change in regard to drink-driving, and rightly so. We cannot expect a change if the law itself does not step up to the mark. In an ideal world we would not have anyone acting so selfishly or so thoughtlessly as to drive after taking alcohol. Unfortunately, we do not live in that kind of world. There are people who would put themselves and others at risk. We already make that behaviour illegal. It is time the law made the consequences of that dangerous behaviour match the seriousness of the offence, and that is why I am asking all Deputies to support the Bill.

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