Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am thinking about that but I have not heard any response from him at the committee or anywhere else. I have tried to discuss this with him privately and at different fora but he has not been prepared to do so. He is hell bent on passing this legislation. It is his swan song, especially coming up to the two-year anniversary of his appointment to ministerial office, which is very important to him and some of his Independent Alliance colleagues.

Why can these people simply cannot get a test within a reasonable period? The Minister cannot legislate to put them off the road, lock up their parents, impound the car and send them to jail if they cannot get the test. It is not their fault they cannot get the test.

Passing it is another issue. Many of these drivers have done the theory test. We have people returning from America or other countries who emigrated and were wanted back, and they are forced to go through a theory test and a driving test and forced through everything. It is insulting to those people, who drove here for maybe 20 years and drove in America in all kinds of situations, that they are forced to go do a theory test. It is madness. As I said, I want answers to those questions. The Minister is making legislation that is unimplementable and his colleagues who will vote for it are doing the same. Those 1,700 people cannot even get a test.

I salute a school in Tipperary town, the Abbey School, which as part of the TY programme has a simulator and a driving tester comes in and gives lessons. It is a wonderful scheme that it has run for years. That should be in every school, if they have the space to do it or acquire a track. There is a man in my town, in Cahir, as well who is looking for permission to build a karting track and he has offered it as a simulator track to train people in how to drive and help to educate these young people.

Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí and they always will. We have great young people. We must admire them. The Minister is making criminals of them when, in their effort to finish their education, they must have a car. To go to an apprenticeship, they must have a car. To go back and forward from their place of work or school, they need a car. They do not have the school buses.

The Minister has some antiquated school buses out there in the fleet and he has not done anything to sort it out. I attended a school in Deputy O'Keeffe's town, a wonderful class of TY as well, in the brothers' school in Mitchelstown, where they had done a project on wearing seat belts in school buses. Approximately a month later, I saw - thank God, no one was hurt - that a bus turned over and they had to come out through the bus driver's door, and the heroic driver and heroic students helped them out. There were no seat belts. It would be more important to bring in legislation for that, not a carrot and stick to fine them but to try to encourage them. They do not wear seat belts in the school bus. I asked my own daughter and she said it was not cool. That is more important. A bus can travel at 50 mph carrying 60 pupils on the roads, some of which are not fit for a donkey and cart. These roads,, which the Government will not address either, are in an awful state.

We must encourage young people to go forward in life and learn to drive. I was outside and I heard someone, I think it was Deputy Fitzmaurice, talking about how most farmers' sons and daughters thankfully can learn to drive the tractor and rudaí mar sin such as machinery, on the land and they are expert drivers when they come out on the road and can pass the test with no problem. Others, in towns and places, do not have that facility. The vast majority of the Government's school buses have no seat belts and the fleet is outdated.

There are taxi drivers who the Minister is forcing to replace their cars after ten years. These are the finest of cars, that have passed the NCT and have passed a further test that they have to do to be a taxi involving measurements and space and safety issues, and they are banished. It is another stupid act. I go to other countries and some such cars are 30 years old. Their clock has gone around six times and they are flying around. Then there are many old buses in the fleet that are 20 or 30 years old.

There is a plethora of areas the Minister could look at if he cared to but he has zoned in on this with a passion to tell those people in rural Ireland that he will sort them out, and "I am all right, Jack." As I said, those 1,700 people cannot get a date for a test, let alone get a test. What if they are stopped by the gardaí? I know the gardaí and I support them 100%. No country can be governed without the support of the public, and the gardaí themselves know this. The Minister will have legislation that will make criminals of young people. God knows, with the mental health issues and the stigmas around so many other issues, in the legislation we are passing here the Minister should not be trying to make criminals of them. That is what the Minister is doing, clear and simple. By not allowing them to do the test, not providing for a situation where they can get a test, not appointing the testers, and not cleaning up the system and making it fit for purpose, the Minister is making criminals of our young people, both in rural and urban Ireland, who want to get their test.

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