Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will be sharing my time with Deputy Flaherty. We will take seven and four minutes, respectively. Deputy Flaherty can take over whenever I run out of issues for the Minister.

I want to first deal with the Road Traffic Act, as it is now, having been passed and signed by the President over the summer. It contains many initiatives and measures to improve the safety of people on our roads and elsewhere. The Minister will know of my own advocacy in the area of the scrambler bike legislation. I introduced a Private Members' Bill that was incorporated into that Act. I acknowledge that after 20 years of us calling for progress on the matter, the Minister was the first to listen to us. He worked with the Tánaiste and the Attorney General to try to get solutions. At our local safety forum, we were asked when those powers will be made available to the Garda. I met with the Garda Commissioner on the issue. I understand that between the Attorney General's office and the Garda Commissioner's legal office, it is being operationalised. I ask the Minister to do everything in his power to ensure the power to seize is available and the new offence of driving dangerously on a scrambler bike and the other measures are implemented as soon as possible.

I join my colleagues in saying that the e-scooter provisions that were passed as part of that same Act are very important, particularly for pedestrians. I say that because pedestrians are the most vulnerable of all the users of our roads and footpaths. I give my condolences to all those who have died in road traffic accidents. The most recent was in my constituency and involved a pedestrian. We know that pedestrians are the most vulnerable on the roads and, therefore, pedestrian measures are the best way we can protect them. I welcome the new junction control pedestrian crossings at Grace Park Road, which is important. There are three roundabouts in that area, two of which I will talk about. Those are the Oscar Traynor Road-M1 roundabout, the Jamestown Road roundabout and the McKee Avenue-M2 roundabout. There are no pedestrian refuges at all. There is no mechanism for people in the whole of their health to be able to cross those junctions, never mind people in wheelchairs or with buggies, or vulnerable children who are trying to cross. The Minister has provided funding but, unfortunately, the local authorities have been far too slow. I am lost in a morass between the National Transport Authority and the local authority in trying to find out when projects will come forward and be ready and so on. I will write directly to the Minister on the Oscar Traynor Road roundabout, which is a joint project of Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council, and the Jamestown Road roundabout. Pedestrian refuge must be provided on these big old road engineer-style roundabouts. They are not safe for pedestrians. The Minister might come back to me in writing, if he can, on the issue of operationalising the measures for scrambler bikes. They are absolutely needed. Communities are waiting for them to be operationalised by the Garda. They will make an enormous difference in our communities.

See this speech in context