Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for outlining the Bill. It is something we have all been keen to look at. First and foremost, I am glad he withdrew the part of it relating to time-dependent penalty points. I hope he now accepts that the notion of having penalty points for weekends as opposed to weekdays is not a good idea and is simply inappropriate, in our system or indeed anywhere.

The difficulty we have with this legislation is that the basics are not right. At the end of the day, we all want to see the tragedies on our roads brought to an end. So many people have lost their lives and so many families have been decimated by collisions and by road traffic accidents. Yes, an awful lot of it is down to speed. Speed is a big factor in that. The speed issue is also around people who are intoxicated either with drugs or alcohol or whatever. Usually they are the people who are also speeding on our roads.

We can look at the issue internationally. I have read the recommendations and the speed limit review. I also have the Bill digest, for which I thank the Oireachtas Library and Research Service, which produced it. I have also read other material around this to look at international examples. When we consider the whole, it tells us that we need appropriate speed limits on the roads but we also need very safe roads for people to drive on, proper enforcement of those speed limits and proper enforcement of the legislation that is in place. This is where we are falling down big time in this country. The Minister of State will have to recognise this. Since 2009, we have dropped by almost half in the numbers in our roads policing units across the State. In the past three years they have dropped again by almost 15%. If there is not the level of enforcement of the laws, then producing more laws is not going to change that. I recently had a lengthy conversation with a retired member of An Garda Síochána who worked in the roads policing unit for many years. He made the point that they would often catch somebody travelling at maybe 30% or 40% above the speed limit. The person would enter another area with a limit that was lower again and the driver would then be 60% above the speed limit. It did not matter which limit that person was subject to, he or she was going to drive well beyond it. He made the point to me that lowering a limit does not prevent the person from driving beyond it. All it does is re-emphasise that they are in an area where they should drive slower. We need to have adequate deterrents.

I welcome the measures being brought in around the penalty points where they will actually have to deal with the multiple penalty points for the one incident. That is welcome and it needs to come in. The mandatory drug testing after a collision or a particularly serious collision is also something that should have been in place a long time ago. That measure is certainly welcome but it is closing the stable door when the horse has bolted; the collision has happened and the person was driving while intoxicated. We need to prevent people driving while intoxicated, using drugs or alcohol. We do not have enough deterrents to stop that from happening in the beginning. Checking somebody after the collision has happened clearly, in some sense, is too late and particularly with regard to people who have been seriously injured or possibly killed in that collision. The measures introduced here by the Minister of State only go a part of the way to what needs to be resolved.

On the speed limits, the other issue is the big one that all of us have. We know there are many roads where speed limits need to be reduced. There are also roads where the speed limit at present is quite appropriate if people adhere to it. There are people, however, who are not adhering to them because we do not have the enforcement measures in place. Not having the enforcement of measures in place cannot be replaced by bringing those limits down further. They need to put the proper enforcement measures in place. That is the key to all of this. The difficulty we have is a difficulty across the whole country where there are many roads with stretches that have bad bends and dangerous junctions and where incidents occur on a regular basis.

Local authorities look for funding to get works done at those locations but they do not get the funding and the problems continue. These locations were often called black spots in the past. We need to remove those black spots and that requires investment, not legislation. Having adequate preventative measures in place across the entire State, particularly having enough gardaí to deal with these issues, requires investment, not legislation. That is where we differ and where we have a difficulty with these proposals.

The Minister of State brought the proposals to the committee and sought a waiver on pre-legislative scrutiny, which I opposed. Waivers should not happen. There is a very good reason to have pre-legislative scrutiny, which is the need to bring in experts and discuss the unintended consequences that sometimes arise from legislation of this nature. The point was also made to me by the individual to whom I referred, who has vast experience in this area, that when a speed limit is, as he termed it, too restrictive in an area where is a very good stretch of road, motorists will break that limit. If people see a law they think is inappropriate, it is very difficult to get them to adhere to it. In some cases, where there is a very slow passage of traffic going through an area and a motorist held up behind it sees a break in the traffic, he or she will take the chance of trying to overtake. That introduces a dangerous element to the situation. It is an unintended consequence of reducing limits but it often is a consequence that needs to be considered. While I welcome anything that can reduce accidents on the roads, I do not believe this legislation will do that unless there is a vast improvement in the enforcement of the laws currently in place as well as a vast improvement in the level of investment in the roads network around the country to ensure black spots and other serious problems and difficulties are addressed.

Another issue to consider is that many motorists have deadlines to get to where they need to go. There will be a backlash in respect of that. We need to have some understanding of the situation of delivery drivers and so on. People need to get to places on time. We have to take that into consideration but it cannot outweigh safety, which must be the primary consideration at play in all of this. The Minister of State mentioned the GoSafe vans that are parked on particular roads. We see it all the time around the country where a motorist is a few kilometres over the limit on a clear stretch of road and the photograph is taken. There is not another vehicle in sight and, apart from the driver being a couple of kilometres over the limit, the situation is clearly quite safe. Such motorists are, of course, breaking the law but they are not usually the people causing accidents or incidents. It is the chancers who cause accidents, that is, the people who overtake on corners and simply abuse the system to the stage that they are driving recklessly on the road. We see them regularly and, unfortunately, they are not caught in those situations.

Other measures and mechanisms need to be introduced. There is possibly a law or system that can be introduced whereby the cameras used by gardaí and in the GoSafe vans could be used in a vehicle that is being driven along at the speed limit, rather than a vehicle stationary on the road, and everything that goes past that vehicle and is over the limit would be caught on the camera. That could be done. We need more ways of doing things but that requires not more legislation but more enforcement of the present legislation. That is the big issue people have. We need enforcement and investment, including investment in education. We need to see more graphic advertisements on the television to ensure people understand the gravity of the consequences of driving too fast, driving while intoxicated, not wearing safety belts or using mobile phones will driving. We all know the latter has become one of the issues that is causing more and more traffic collisions. People are driving with their knees and using their phones to text. I have seen that happening and I have spoken to people who see it on a regular basis. We need a way to detect that and stamp it out. It is one of the key factors in the increasing number of incidents.

As I said, we welcome anything that will reduce road deaths. The provisions in this Bill are part of the recommendations that came out of the review of speed limits. However, that review did not examine compliance with existing limits. That is the big concern we have. The reason there is such low compliance with the existing limits is that the enforcement is not in place. Until we get that right, we are wasting our time. This legislation may have merit, and we will look at it, but the Minister of State is going down the wrong track if he thinks it is going to be the saviour of everything. Clearly, that will not be the case. We need efficient legislation but we also need proper enforcement and proper investment in our road infrastructure.

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