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

Every youngster deserves one chance. If he or she blots his or her copybook, I would accept it, but they are not being given a chance. The Minister does not understand what it is like to live in a remote place. If he was asked to live in a place like Glenmore, Lauragh or the Black Valley for three or four weeks and did not have a car, he would understand how hard it was and what it was like to try to manage in such places. Gardaí have enough to do as it is without having to monitor this new law. There are drugs to be monitored, with thieves and robbers, as well as anti-social behaviour. Does the Minister know that if he succeeds in pushing or ramming this Bill through, it will hurt many elderly people who took up driving when their partners died? I refer to those who had to start to learn to drive and took the 12 lessons. It could be a woman in her 60s who took 12 driving lessons. They are perfectly good drivers and can drive well in rural places, from Kenmare to Lauragh, Sneem to Caherdaniel and Gneeveguilla to Rathmore. However, when they have to go into a city to take the driving test, they lose confidence and start to shake and shiver. Many of them are finding it very hard to pass the test. Does the Minister realise he is going to hurt this group of people?

I was in a supermarket in Killarney very early last Sunday morning. A girl who has been working there for a few months asked me when the Minister's Bill would be passed, or whether it had already been passed. I said it had not yet been passed. She said that when it was, it would be the end of her because her mother was working, that her father was dead and that she would have no one to bring her to the supermarket to work.

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