Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is a decent man and a decent Minister of State, but the Minister for Transport or a Minister of State in the Department of Transport should be here to conclude this debate. It should be a rule of the House, with all due respect.

There is a bit of passing the buck between the Departments of Transport and Justice, the Department of housing in conjunction with local authorities and the RSA when it comes to this issue. It is a big conglomerate of different people and no one is fully in charge. We blame the RSA, the Department of Transport or whoever but a real focus is needed now, given what is happening. As my colleagues outlined, what is happening as regards fatalities and serious injury is simply unacceptable. Not to repeat the points, but the issue of GDPR and the sharing of traffic collision data is a complete joke. It should be solved within weeks.

Like everyone else, I spent recent months canvassing with my local election candidates, Louise Morgan-Walsh, Fiona Bonfield, Michael Brennan and Jordan Lewis. It is a fact that roads are the biggest issue. I was recently in the Silvermines at a place called Capparoe. I will use the L-6066-1 and L-6066-2 as examples because we could all name hundreds of roads. They are not roads. They do not exist. The roads have been destroyed. The past nine months of continuous rain means that many roads have been destroyed. We really need to look at an audit of local and regional roads. I am a big supporter of the low-cost safety schemes but there are simply not enough of them. I am the son of a local authority roads worker who worked on the roads for three decades. Driving them, he says he has never seen them in as bad condition in his life and he is 85 years of age.

There are now 31,000 local authority staff. There were 38,000 in 2008. Even if they do not have the funding to do the work, managing water alone saves roads. That has been given up. It does not happen to the level required any more. We have changes in our weather patterns and we need more directly employed workers. I feel sorry every time I have to pick up the phone to ring the local engineers because they cannot perform miracles. It is impossible. They do not have the staff or the capacity to contract in the staff or work and they do not have the funding. Funding levels have dropped for pavement renewals year on year, for regional and local roads and for improvements to regional and local roads. It is not just maintenance. It is improvements. It is not happening to the level required. Let us look at what is coming down the road as regards climate change. The additional funding that has been given out for emergencies, especially for what happened in Cork, is not sustainable.

I will say a few words on roads policing. The Garda Commissioner stated today at a committee that he will get 55 more gardaí. It is a simple fact that there has been a 15% drop in policing numbers in roads policing. I represent Templemore and the gardaí treat the 30 minutes per day as a joke. The word used is "Tokenistic". Traffic garda numbers are down from 804 members in 2013 to 664 members this year. If the Government and the Department of Justice were really serious about this, those numbers would be brought up to previous levels. Let us consider what is happening in Limerick. All members of the most successful traffic garda unit - I am being very careful - have not been charged with anything, but have all been suspended. That is a whole unit and 1,400 or more tickets have not been prosecuted through the courts. What does that say about what the Government thinks about road safety? People were caught doing a range of minor to serious things and nothing happened. The Garda Commissioner is now looking for new people to replace these gardaí. That tells me what the Government thinks about road safety, as some of those people will have gone on to commit other serious offences.

The situation of driving tests was outlined by the Minister of State earlier. To be proud of getting down to 15 or 16 weeks in six months or so is laughable. The whole system of driver testing and the process by which it is done in which people can drive intermittently between various different stages need to be completely reviewed.

We need more transport options in rural areas. The fact that there is a lack of taxis and hackney cabs in rural areas to facilitate people so they will not drive at certain times needs to be looked at.

I hope the Minister of State will absolutely endorse the Labour Party's Bill on the filming of fatal collisions brought forward by our colleague Deputy Duncan Smith with great elegance. Ultimately, the bottom line is that we need more funding, especially for regional and local roads. The weather conditions have been so bad that what is there now will not work. On top of that, we need renewed vigour as regards policing and policing that will result in actual enforcement. The figures show that the volume of policing is drastically down. Finally, we need a whole-of-government approach that does not go from Billy to Jack as regards the Departments of Transport, housing, Justice and the RSA. Road safety and the issues we raised today cannot be farmed out.

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