Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We will be challenging it because it was an illegal vote. The Minister might be laughing now but we will challenge it as far as we can. The Minister does not seem to care. He is on some kind of a crusade, some kind of a power ego trip, to get this Bill through. However, he does not realise he is hurting honest, good living people. I am speaking for Kerry. Every other Deputy can speak for their own rural area because people in those areas will be hurt too. No accidents or fatalities were caused by people in the 50 mg to 80 mg bracket. The Minister needs to realise what he is doing. He does not realise how the people of rural Ireland have to manage, where a car is everything. Under this legislation a person found to be 5 mg over the 50 mg permitted will be put off the road for three months. The person's employer may not wait and the children may not be able to go to school. It will make a vast difference and rural Ireland will never again be the same after the Minister, with the support of Fine Gael, enacts this legislation.

Rural Ireland is being hit. Since I came up here there has been so much talk about what the Government will do for rural Ireland. This Bill is another way in which it is hurting rural Ireland. All people in rural Ireland asked for is to be left alone but they are not being left alone. They are being targeted by so many other different things, and now the Minister is targeting them. I know they never did anything wrong to the Minister and they never would. This Bill will hurt them for ever more. Ye threw it at us that it was fostering or aiding and abetting public houses. However, I am after outlining to the Minister that it will affect people who visit friends and neighbours across their parish and locally. This legislation will hurt them because they will not even be able to have one bottle of beer while having a conversation. All of that is gone forever.

On the roads I am talking about, the most speed a person can do is 20 miles per hour in second or third gear. There will be no car ahead or behind you. On the first day I went to the committee that was discussing this Bill I made the Minister aware that farmers have only one vehicle. They either have a van, a jeep or a small tractor yet they are being treated the same as a professional driver in terms of the 20 mg limit. I am asking the Minister to do something about this.

I ask that something be done at least to bring them up out of that bracket because they are treated the very same as an articulated truck driver or a professional bus driver doing the maximum speed on the motorway. Even though they may only have a small jeep, a small van or a small tractor, their limit is 21 mg. This is the way they are being treated by the law. People are also being told that if they use their commercial van for private purposes, for example, to go to mass, and they are caught, the law will be applied forcefully. The person is supposed to have what is known as private tax on the van. If the person is caught using the van or jeep for his or her private business, such as going shopping, going to mass or any social event, the person is supposed to have private tax on the vehicle which costs about three times more. If, however, the person is caught in the same van with 21 mg of alcohol in their blood, he or she will be put off the road. I asked the Minister to do something about this and he said he would look at it, but he did not do anything about it. All the Minister is interested in is putting people off the road. I do not support this Bill because it will not help to reduce accidents.

There are myriad things that would help, with the support of the Minister. As I came to the Dáil yesterday, I noticed a branch hanging over the road between Mallow and Kildorrery. It will fall down onto somebody. I have told the Minister about this stretch of road before. It is in a very precarious state. The branch is not very big, but if it hit a woman who might be travelling along the road with her children, she would be killed. She would then be a statistic. The Minister just does not care. He could have had something done about the trees since the recent terrible storms by making a law to help landowners who cannot actually go out on the road for fear of being blown off it. The local authorities, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, farmers and landowners should work together to ensure that nothing falls onto the traffic travelling on the road. That type of situation can kill. The Minister, however, has no interest in that. All he wants to do is paralyse these grand people in rural Ireland and put them off the road.

It looks like the Minister is getting his way because he has the support of Fine Gael. We do not know about the others. Sinn Féin supports the Bill also, even though its members are elected by rural people. Sinn Féin will have to answer when they call to people's doors. I would advise those Deputies not to bring the Minister with them because they will not get very much support. Having supported the Minister, I do not know what would happen those parties. I do not wish bad to anyone but I guarantee that those Deputies should not appear behind the Minister because he is not welcome in many places around rural Kerry. This will hurt-----

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