Kevin O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The damage has been done already with the proposals of the Minister, Deputy Ross. He has put the fear of life into rural Ireland already. I wish to speak against the proposed Bill. Approximately 12 months ago we had a spike in road fatalities in this country. What followed was a knee-jerk reaction from the Minister, Deputy Ross, pointing the finger straight away at drink driving. Both he and his partners in Government, Fine Gael, claim there has been an upturn in the economy, which in turn led to extra vehicles on the road but that fact has been forgotten. What has been the Minister's response in the past month? We have seen some major road fatalities involving heavy goods vehicles and cyclists at bad road junctions. That brings me back to my previous comment that the Bill before us is a knee-jerk reaction.

We all know about Donegal and how young people up there love cars. Road fatalities have been a feature of that county for years and we would all like to resolve the situation. On 6 May this year I read an article in the Daily Mailwhich included a comment from a road safety officer. He said he believed more deaths are imminent on the roads there. That is a sad situation. I did not hear the Minister respond to that comment on how to solve the problem of road fatalities in Donegal.

Like the previous speaker I am a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport. I am the Vice Chairman. The Minister attended a meeting on 8 February to outline his proposals. I was immediately taken aback. He said he intended to put people off the road. He said he was "concerned that in certain cases where people have breached the alcohol limit while driving, the awarding of three penalty points sends out the message that it is not a serious". I tabled a number of parliamentary questions to the Department of Justice and Equality asking for figures to prove that road traffic legislation was being abused, namely, if there were many repeat offenders. The Department could not give me an answer. It does not have any figures. I was also told the Department did not have time to collate such information. I assure the Minister that anyone who gets caught will never forget it no matter what bracket they are in. I am aware of a recent case involving an elderly man in Tipperary who would only have two pints throughout an entire day. Going home one evening he was pulled over at a checkpoint. The bag was produced but it was not working properly and he had to be brought to the barracks. He had to wait for the results to come back to him. He collected them at the post office.

He passed and he was fine, but that man will never go to the local pub again. The fear of life has been put into him.

We brought various bodies before our committee, including the Garda which gave its side of the story. We also brought in many families of victims of road fatalities, listened to their cases and sympathised with them. No one condones drink driving. What we heard was like pitching someone like me from the Vauxhall League against a Premier League team: we are not fighting on a level playing pitch. The people who are responsible for victims and fatalities are drivers who should be put away in jail for life if they drink and drive with such levels of alcohol in their blood.

The current Minister of State with responsibility for sport is the former chairman of the committee of which I am a member. He came to the conclusion after all our consultations that we could not determine the matter. The committee was inconclusive on whether the Bill was necessary. Some members said it was, but others were unsure. The facts were not present to indicate that bringing forward this legislation was of any benefit. The Joint Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport was inconclusive on the matter. We did not say it should be brought in or that it should not.

We need to go back to the drawing board. We need a better and more detailed account of the matter. Representatives of the Road Safety Authority appeared before the committee and gave us plenty of figures. It is ironic. This time 12 months ago the Minister was down the throat of the chairperson of the Road Safety Authority. However, the Minister was not long getting the RSA back on his side for this legislation. The RSA produced with some figures, including from one survey which said seven out of ten people have a drink when they drive. Naturally, it sounds very bad. However, if the authority did the survey on the clergy, the same figure would be ten out of ten. That would be a major headline: ten out of ten clergy have drink on them because of their clerical duties.

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