Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This applies to penalty points. If a young driver gets six penalty points they are off the road. It is very relevant. On the last occasion I went through the national drivers licence service, NDLS, situation and the problems inherent in it. We want people to go and get their licences. They should start in school. Mol an oige agus tiocfaidh sí. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle has used that phrase many times himself. They should be given a proper chance and not be vilified and criminalised before they start.

I mentioned speed cameras on the last occasion. It cost €88 million to provide them and so far only €32.7 million has been collected in fines. These are the areas the Minister should turn his attention to; he was well able to write about such things before he was elected to this Dáil. It cost €88 million and only €32.7 million has been collected in motorists' fines. That would not be good in any business; if any business operated in that way it would go under. Those figures cover the period from 2010 to 22 July 2017 and were provided to me by way of a parliamentary question, from all of the resources the Minister has in his Department. I know that the speed cameras have had a positive effect and have reduced the number of road deaths. I welcome anything that helps in that regard, contrary to what the Minister might want to suggest. I also believe it is time to re-examine that type of contract. There should always be a review clause included in any type of contract and this has not been reviewed for several years.

The impact of the safety camera regime has reduced road fatalities and accidents, particularly in areas blighted with incidents over the years. I am not suggesting we remove them completely. However, I have seen them on several occasions on roadways which are not accident blackspots.

I have asked them personally and I have written to their bosses, requesting that they avoid certain parts of the area. One such well-known spot in my area is Duggan's Bends outside Cahir in Tipperary, where there have been multiple fatalities. As I said, they did not do as I asked. There is enormous cost associated with operating a Garda safety camera contract. In each year from 2012 to 2015, it cost the State over €17 million to maintain the contract, at a cost of almost €16 million in 2011. To date, revenue generated from the safety camera contract has totalled €32 million. There is something very wrong there.

Again, the Minister is basing many aspects of his Bill on figures and statistics. I heard an interesting "Morning Ireland" programme since we last sat in this Chamber talking about this issue. I heard how the RSA had requested information from An Garda Síochána several times. It also requested it from the Minister's Department, but it could not be given. The request was refused. How can we make legislation on the basis of figures that do not stand up, and they do not stand up? It is bad enough to have common, obvious things in the Bill that the Minister blatantly cannot stand over, on which I will ask him to respond, without having a situation where the RSA's requests are refused. I heard someone senior on the radio saying that they had requested information. It may have been on Sunday when I heard it on the news but it was on RTÉ radio anyway. For some reason, the figures or the stats have not been provided.

In the recent and ongoing breath test controversy, it does not give me any kudos at all but rather a sense of shame to note that Tipperary had the highest rate of falsification in the country, with the number of tests inflated by 385%. It is appalling that this would be carried out by State organisations. Nobody was held accountable. I know that an investigation is still going on, but some counties had rates of 60%, 50% and 40% while Tipperary had a rate of 385%. There is an adage that has been there since colonial times that where Tipperary leads, Ireland follows. That relates to the War of Independence and our fight for freedom, but I do not want anyone to follow this because the figures were falsified by a rate of 385%.

The Minister is flicking through his notes. He is not listening, not interested and not bothered in many areas. It is easier to go after the vulnerable learner drivers. It is easier to go after the vulnerable young people who want to get out in life, further their education or get an apprenticeship, and their parents who bought the car for them and got the insurance, which is extortionate. The Minister is not touching the insurance industry. It is a pure cartel. Here is a quote from the Irish Times at the time of the scandal:

Every geographical Garda division in the country had some level of over-reporting of breath tests but the figures varied between areas to a huge extent... These figures were reached by comparing the number of breath tests recorded on the Pulse system with the number recorded on the test devices.

It is as simple as that. There is not much room for discrepancy. A boy or girl finishing sixth class in school could do the maths. This is not for scientists or mathematicians.

As I said, there is a blatant flaw in this Bill. If the Minister builds a house on shaky foundations, we know what will happen. We have had issues with pyrite and bad concrete, but this Bill is rushed. It is not properly considered, and it is certainly doomed for failure. There are too many flaws, and the Minister is refusing point blank to answer any question about the 385% falsification of figures, issues within the Road Safety Authority, the anomalies from test centre to test centre, or the facts that I have put before him about delays in driving tests and the different failure rate in different counties or in different test centres within counties. There is an appalling, frightening degree of variance depending on the test centre. We need a complete evaluation of the test centres and application centres, and for that matter the National Driver Licence Service, NDLS. We need to investigate it.

We hope to attract people back to this country and the Taoiseach talks about the people who get up in the morning. We want to grow our economy and we want to get people back to Ireland to work. We invite them back, and we have road shows all over. We are trying to get nurses, psychiatrists and every profession back to our country. However, if they have been gone for four or five years, they have to go back and start with a theory test and driving lessons. They have to go through the whole lot again. Why are we humiliating our citizens like that, people who might have driven in the busiest cities in the world since they left here, because their licence has lapsed and they have been out of the country?

The cart is before the horse in many areas, and the Minister is refusing to engage with us. He is refusing to engage with the committee, and above all he is refusing to engage with the ordinary people. They will not even be listened to. When we are not listened to, how can they be listened to? There is a lot wrong with this Bill, and that is why we are here debating it. We are not doing it for fun. We are not doing it to delay or annoy the Minister. We are annoyed with the Minister's intemperate language and his habit of continuously writing us off as a cabal. We heard disparaging language this morning on "Morning Ireland". It would fit the Minister better to look at some of those glaring issues that are as obvious on the nose on his face. I refer to the things that are going on in the Road Safety Authority and in the test centres, and the things that are not going on.

There was a young businessman in my constituency, who I thank the Minister for meeting. He came up with a great idea for road safety. He developed a tyre safety app. In fairness, the Minister did meet him, listened to him and was interested, as was anybody that saw the app. I was not aware of the danger that was out there. Between the tread on a tyre is everything a motorist is dependent on, no matter how big the tyre is or whether it is a BMW or a Morris Minor. He had an interesting app and he made attempts, with the Minister's help, to get the Road Safety Authority to engage with him. This was a vibrant, intelligent, excellent idea. He had gone with a prototype to many different national and international insurance companies to see if they would take it up, because it could save hundreds if not thousands of lives. Driving on bad and defective tyres, especially on a wet road, is really very dangerous and serious, which many of us do not know. As I said, that was a wonderful app, a wonderful idea. He went by appointment to meet the head of the RSA in Sligo. He travelled from Cahir in Tipperary to Sligo for a Monday morning meeting. He closed his business early on Sunday night, stayed in a bed and breakfast somewhere around Roscommon and arrived for his meeting, only to find he was the only person there. The head of the RSA did not think it was worthwhile to turn up, even though there was an appointment. It was not as though the young man had gate-crashed. This appointment had come after several months of trying. A wonderful idea to which the Government closed its eyes. There is none so blind as those who cannot see, or do not want to see.

The RSA and the Department do not have all the wisdom here. There are normal people out there who know the roads, the land and the dangers. Any tyre salesman worth his salt will tell a motorist the thread of a tyre. An Garda Síochána has equipment to measure them, and rightly so because it is so dangerous to have defective tyres. If one meets a bit of frost or water, they plainly do not have a hope. That is an area that could be addressed. This was a young man with great initiative, with another business and a young child and partner, who wanted to play his part and have this innovative idea tested. I am not saying that it was going to be 100% perfect but he wanted it to be tried to and tested, and to see where it would end up.

The Minister does not want to see that at all, see those other issues or listen to the complaints of mothers and fathers, and indeed the people who try to do their tests but cannot get the chance. When they do get a test, they are failed for spurious reasons. When they are failed for spurious reasons, they are then barred from testing for one month. They must then apply and go through the system again, which takes six months in my county. As I said, their driving is judged on the snapshot in time of the 40-minute test, the questions afterwards and the visual inspection, if it is not a wet day. If it is a wet day, they can get away without the visual inspection.

There are many anomalies here, but the Minister refuses steadfastly to engage. I am asking him again to please listen and engage with us here. Why are we going to make criminals of young people when they are doing everything in their power to do the right thing? They have tried to learn. They are trying to get on the road. They pay for their lessons and then go to their test. We need a sliding scale there, a kind of advisory fail result if it is something minor and not a driving defect. I refer to cases where the fail is because of something that happens on the test, something about the oil, the water, the oil cap, a broken seat adjuster, or one that is not broken but is not fully covered in rubber. We need a whole-school evaluation from junior certificate up.

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