Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We tabled this motion in good faith. The Government has decided not to oppose it but it is a complete cop-out. It is an abject failure of the Department. I am disappointed that the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, is not here for the reply.

With the Chair's indulgence, I would like to sympathise with the families of the four young leaving certificate students from Clonmel. They were on their way to get a bus in Clonmel to celebrate their leaving certificate and met their untimely deaths. They were from the McSweeney, Murphy and Coffey families. It is so sad. I salute the Garda Síochána, the emergency services, all the other auxiliary services, indeed Fr. Billy Meehan, who attended the scene, South Tipperary General Hospital, and every person in the community who rallied around those people. The following week, there was a tragedy in Cashel when a little baby and her grandparents were killed. We do not know the causes. Nobody does. It just shows how fickle life can be.

I thank the communities for the support of the families. I thank an Rialtas too. Uachtarán na hÉireann came down. Everybody came. Ní neart go cur le chéile. There was a sense of the meitheal. It was amazing in Clonmel that weekend. I spoke to the superintendent on the Monday morning afterwards to thank the gardaí. They have an awful job in a situation like that. There was not a crime in the town that weekend. None of the usual incidents happened. There was no crime. With the trauma and grief, everything stopped, even the crime, which was a wonderful experience. Everybody respected that. Funerals have been held and there is one more to go this Sunday. People have been trying to pick up the pieces. It is tough.

On road safety, I want to welcome our young people here today. It is wonderful that they want to go driving. When we were young, my neighbours would not let me near a vehicle. We did not have the vehicles, first of all. We might be able to drive a tractor or whatever. Young people now are educated, bright, enthusiastic and have their lives ahead of them. They are emigrating because they cannot get driver licences. It is a crying shame that waiting lists are so long. The figures are just not acceptable in any country, never mind a modern day democracy. The number of people waiting for driver tests has increased by 61% in the last year. More than 71,500 people are waiting for a test date.

The RSA and NCT operators were before the Committee on Transport and Communications on 20 September 2023. I reiterate what Deputy Nolan said earlier. We should have Ms O'Donnell, the chairperson of the RSA, and any other officials who are responsible for the RSA back before the committee. It has a service-level agreement, which is its contract. Its contract is null and void because it is not fulfilling the contract. It is meant to be a ten-week waiting list. I have the figures for the waiting list here. It is just not acceptable. The Cathaoirleach Gníomhach, Deputy Verona Murphy, is a businessperson. Many of us here on this side are businesspeople too.

We would not survive a week or month in business if we treated people like this. The procedure now is that people must apply for a test and apply to be invited to do a test. It is another layer of bureaucracy that has just been put in there. I salute county council staff from long ago, and the driving testers, when we had no lessons but went in, did our tests and passed them. We walked into the council, paid our fiver, and got our licence or ceadúnas, which included many vehicles.

I ask the Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Deputy Chambers, a young Minister who I like as a person, to think of his party's former leader, Charles J. Haughey, and be a visionary, do something for the country and its young people, as he is a young Minister, and ask for an amnesty. I remember when Liam Hyland's colleague in Laois-Offaly - Deputy Nolan might assist me - brought in the amnesty. At that time, a licence was given to everybody. They just had to go in and buy it. Many of those people are still on the road under several categories. That was not a good thing but it happened and had to happen because of the backlog.

Due to the proficiency of driving instructors, who I also salute for the job they do, and the fact people now have to have 12 lessons with a certified, respected and recognised instructor before they can even apply for a test, I propose that we have an amnesty. Where that instructor is willing to send people forward for a test, he must also be willing to give them a certificate of their driving competency. That certificate should allow them their full licence until such time as they can get their tests. If they fail that test, they can go back to start again.

This situation is just not fair. It borders on criminal. It is mental torture and shameful that we have young people who want to get on the road. They want to get on the road, and I heard Deputy Murphy mention this in respect of parts of Kildare that I do not know, because in rural Ireland especially they cannot manage without a car. As Deputy Healy-Rae alluded to, I wonder whether there is a veiled attempt by the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, to stop people getting on the road. We know he wants to get cars off the road. He wants people back on bikes, whether it is on penny-farthing bikes, or walking, crawling, pushing a wheelbarrow or whatever. He wants them back in the dark ages with the south-facing window boxes and perished in our homes. Is there an agenda here? The Minister was called out recently by the TII regarding accidents and deaths it suggested would happen on the roads if he did not allow road projects to go ahead. This man has an awful lot to answer for if the TII could come out and make that statement. Has he another underlying, underbelly motive of not wanting people to get on the road? I think he may have. If he has, that must be outed by the Minister of State in Cabinet.

I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, to be a visionary, have a bit of courage - I almost said another word, to grow something - take this on, bring it to Cabinet and get it happening. It is persecution of our young people. As employers, I can speak for the three of us from the Rural Independent Group who are sitting here and others as well. We have people who want to come to work for us but they cannot because they have no full licence. We cannot allow them on the road without that so it is affecting industry. People cannot travel to college. People want to do their apprenticeships in the wonderful new centre at Archerstown near Thurles, another extension to which opened last week. It is a wonderful hub for apprenticeships but people cannot drive there unless they have a full licence. The former Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Shane Ross, in his wisdom, brought in the impediment that young drivers must have a fully licensed driver with them at all times. Of course, he could hop on the bus to his plush house out the road in the leafy suburbs of County Wicklow.

The Government is persecuting people and not thinking about what it is doing. The RSA is a fundamental failure. Apparently, Germany has the same number of deaths we have on its roads. That country does not allow drivers, shortly after getting a full licence, to drive on the autobahns without doing a further test and doing some lessons on those motorways. It seems we should be looking at that here and not the stupid, simple things we are looking at. This Government has lost the will to live as far as I am concerned, if we consider the HSE, the whole housing situation, and many other areas. This area is simple, however.

We talk about road safety but the Government has no more interest in road safety, as other Deputies said. When I was on the county council in 1990, I put down a motion that it would make an inventory of all the drains, inlets and culverts. Deputy Verona Murphy spoke about the man on the Honda 50. It was all men, but I do not care whether it is a man or woman on a Honda 50 or a nifty 50. They should get out with a shovel, because it cannot be done with machines, and open all those inlets. We cannot drive on the roads. Water on roads is one of the most dangerous things of all time. The best of cars will be upturned with water pertaining. The roads cannot then be maintained because frost comes and destroys the road surface. Simple, basic maintenance is not being done. The whole baloney that we cannot cut the hedges is criminal. Road safety, people's personal safety and lifesaving safety must be more important than the flora and fauna. As Deputy Verona Murphy said, the birds have plenty of room in the fields, although we all want to support them as well. The authorities will not deal with the deer population, which is causing mayhem on the roads in County Tipperary.

Many areas need attention but to return to the licensing issue, the Government has failed the people. Accepting the motion is not much good to those people because it can walk away, saying it is all fine, we had a nice debate, and let the merry issue go on. The RSA must be held to account. It must go back to basics. We have all these agencies, including the HSE, the RSA and TII, and we have worse services for people. All our money is being gobbled up in agencies and offices, with brass plates on the wall, a chairperson, a chief executive, and everything else. They have fine jobs but are doing nothing only making services worse. For God's sake, it is the definition of insanity to keep throwing money at things and expect a different result. All these quangos should be cut out and the people who want to drive should be allowed on roads safely. Let them get to work and college and let them educate themselves. Do we want them all on aeroplanes flying abroad?

A foreign driver can come here - do not get me wrong, I am not anti-foreign - and drive on an international licence with no experience of our roads, including driving on a different side of the road, and without any test or any oversight from the RSA. What are we thinking about? Why are we not being fair? Why do we want to penalise and punish our best and brightest young people? Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí. What are we doing? We are persecuting young people and are denying their basic rights. They have the enthusiasm, spirit and interest in getting jobs, getting educated, being in the workforce, getting married, settling down, having a family, and keeping our country alive. However, the Government seems to want to just leave them languish, punish them in every which way, and then criticise them for this, that and the other and blame them unfairly for accidents and everything else. Taking this motion without a vote is just a cop-out for the Government's backbenchers that allows them to not vote against it. The Government has created and is overseeing an appalling vista. It wants to continue to have that going on with no improvement. It is a shocking situation that people have to wait a year to be allowed to apply for a test and maybe wait another six months again. It is sinful.

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