Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is all relevant. Deputy Broughan was given the liberty to speak about it so I am sure the Ceann Comhairle will give me the liberty too. I am trying to drive home to the Minister the folly of some of the things he is doing. Some of the data he is using are criminal. Deputy Broughan today referred to the inaccuracy and the falsehoods in the reporting of serious accidents and serious crimes. The Road Safety Authority should stand condemned. It should get the records from An Garda Síochána and other agencies correct first. It is appalling to have so many miscalculations of homicides and road accidents.

We are talking about sharing data and we cannot even control our own data or get it right. I know the Minister will respond to me and talk about the tragic circumstances. I know that in Deputy O'Keeffe's constituency a young learner driver caused enormous hurt and pain to a family. That was very traumatic, and we totally sympathise and empathise. However, we cannot make laws for one, two, three or four small cases. In many cases, it was never proven who caused the accident. If there is an accident and someone is killed, it could be the driver or it could be responsibility of another person, such as a pedestrian or a cyclist. There are huge issues there.

As such, we cannot go to Europe with any shred of respect for the legislation to which are committing today, when our basic facts and data are wrong. They are wrong, and they are misleading. I am not blaming any person present. This is the fault of someone at the head of the national driver licence service, LDLS, or the Road Safety Authority, RSA. We have so many quangos. A person cannot get information from them. Lodge a parliamentary question and a Deputy is left waiting six or eight months, as Deputy Broughan said. They are unaccountable. The Minister needs to rein them in. The Minister, Deputy Ross, wrote a lot about quangos when he was in Opposition and when he was writing for the paper every Sunday. We all read it. I read it. I respected his writings and believed that he understood the issue, but now the quangos are mushrooming. Today, we are appointing more people to An Bord Pleanála and to other agencies. They are not accountable to anyone. We are accountable to the people, and rightly so.

We must have factual evidence if we want to make legislation. We are criminalising families and telling the parents of learner drivers that their cars will be taken. They will be fined and imprisoned. I wish to correct the record. At one point I said the legislation applied to tractors. That is not in the legislation, thankfully, but it probably the next thing in the Minister's head. If it is not in his head, it is in the heads of the geniuses in the RSA. They just want to discriminate against people from rural Ireland. It is total and utter discrimination. In Dublin, there is not enough room for the public transport. The Government cannot get the new Luas across O'Connell bridge. The Minister made it too big or too long. I do not know what he did with it. Dublin has buses, taxis, the DART and now underground plans. I saw a hurling club protesting outside today. The Government is going to undermine its pitch with tracks. There is not enough room for these facilities.

However, when we try to educate our children and train them in the values of proper driving, road safety and the rules of the road, we are threatened, as though we are wild west people who drive around carelessly and recklessly. We do not. We buy a car for our youngsters. It costs €3,000 or €4,000 and we pay €4,000 or €5,000 for insurance. The car has to get the national car test, NCT, and that is another big burden. When people drives down country roads, their cars are destroyed after coming out of the NCT. The ball bearings, wheels, tyres and everything else have burst. The Government is going to criminalise rural people. They are a soft target. Rural Ireland is a nuisance to the Government. It does not want to do anything outside the Pale. The Pale is the Pale and as for everything outside, to hell or to Connacht with them. It is the same thing.

The Minister sat at Government talks for a long time two years ago, as I did. There was one thing we drove home. The Minister did not push for this, but his colleagues did. We asked that any legislation coming down the road should be rural-proofed. Instead of that, the legislation I see attacks rural Ireland. These harebrained ideas are discriminatory legislation. We are all supposed to be equal under the Constitution, but rural people are viewed as a nuisance. They do not get taxis, and they do not deserve buses. Give them no more train lines and take away all their services. To enable their children to finish their education, they will need a car, to go to a FÁS course, do their exams, go to college or get an apprenticeship. How can a mother or father be in the car with them to drive to work, and then be there to take them home again?

I am in favour of restrictions on those drivers. I am in favour of changing and radically overhauling the tests and teaching the theory and the driver tests in some schools. There is a school in Tipperary town that does it every year with transition year students. They have a track and they do driving courses. It is a fabulous concept. There is a businessman in Cahir who is trying to build a new motor track. He is also going to provide simulator courses for young drivers. It is fabulous. He can think of that while the Government makes all the rules with the gods in the RSA. They are like gods. The Minister knows that I made an appointment with his office for a young man in Cahir with an insurance issue. The Minister met him and I appreciate that. His office dealt very fairly with him. However, when the young man went to meet the god - I should not invoke God on Holy Thursday, I will say the person who thinks they are God - in the RSA, she never turned up to meet him. He had travelled to Sligo. The Minister knows about this. It was an insult. An appointment had been made, and the man stood waiting for a long time. They are above us. They are above the Minister as well. They come up with these poppycock ideas and demonise people to hell, while Dublin has buses and planes.

Mar fhocal scoir, it has come to my attention that all of the RSA test centres to which we bring our cars are operating illegally because they have no up-to-date fire regulations observed. The fire safety of the centres and their staff all over the country has not been tested. The head of the RSA knows this. She has been written to about the matter and is doing nothing about it. We fail our tests if we have a torn seat belt or a bad seat in the car, or something frivolous. Do not get me wrong, I am all for NCTs on brakes, tyres and chassis but I am not for tests of these silly things. Every one of the buildings - I do not know how many there are - is in breach of the Government's regulations on fire safety and other matters. Fire safety checks, checks for gas inhalation and other checks are not being carried out. That is very serious.

I ask the Minister to ask the head of the RSA whether she is aware of the situation that this lunatic raised today in the Dáil. This is coming to me on good faith. I have the business card of the man who came to me. I met him by accident. The situation is a shambles. The law is aimed at the little people, na daoine óga agus na daoine aosta faoin tuath, or outside the Pale. Inside the Pale, they do what they like. They can just draft law and then penalise and demonise ordinary, decent families and working people who want to pay their taxes, educate their children, get their children jobs, and live their lives.

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