Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

First, I congratulate the Minister of State in his new role. Given some of the debate earlier, Deputy Buttimer now will be familiar with roads all over the country. The Minister of State could probably replace Google Maps, particularly having listened to Deputy Collins knowing the various roads of south-west Cork. I am afraid I will continue somewhat in that vein. However, it is to illustrate some of the requirements around road safety at a national level.

One of the challenges we all know about in our local communities, particularly with local and regional roads, are those dangerous roads where there are accident black spots. Locals will tell you about it but the figures are there from the Garda that set out where we have had a problem with particular accidents over the years. I would instance, for instance, the Gorey to Carnew road. It is one of those roads where over the years there have been accidents because of a number of dangerous bends, etc., on that. In the past, it was much more a case whereby funding was made available to local authorities around road realignments to address some of those difficulties with dangerous roads. In looking at those specific structural issues, making funding available to local authorities, even on a competitive basis, from the Department would make much sense.

I agree with the remarks of Deputies as well on the need to speed up testing. I understand the average wait for a driving test is 21 weeks at present. When the Minister of State's predecessor, the Minister, Deputy Chambers, was in this role in April of last year, he indicated that as part of the service level agreement between the Department and the Road Safety Authority, the target was by this summer to reduce that to ten weeks and the Minister of State might indicate whether that will be achieved.

Finally, I will talk about what in many ways are the most vulnerable groups on the roads, namely, cyclists and pedestrians. We have seen a lot of positive investment in active travel over the past number of years. I look at what is happening in Arklow, for instance, where we are seeing extensive new cycle paths and footpaths being put in place. My problem, though, is that while we are investing heavily in these new facilities, we are not providing sufficient resources for investment in existing urban locations or to repair and maintain existing cycle lanes and cycle paths. I agree with my colleague, Deputy Connolly, when he talked about safe routes to schools and the level of investment, and the return on some of those. The village of Ballycanew in north Wexford is rapidly growing and has a fantastic school right in its heart. However, it is difficult for people to walk from the estates in the village to the school itself because there are not linked-up footpaths and yet there is not funding available for the local authority to be able to provide those footpaths. There is funding for huge new footpaths, including, as the Ceann Comhairle knows well, on the Newtown Road in Wexford town, which is getting millions of euro spent on it, but it is not there to simply provide footpaths in existing areas. I will use another local example, namely, that of Pearse Street in Gorey. It is right in the centre of town. The road was resurfaced recently but the footpaths could not be repaired. The premises of the Irish Wheelchair Association is located on Pearse Street but there is no money to repair the footpath, which is treacherous in places for some wheelchair users and it is safer for the wheelchair users to go on the road, simply because the local authority does not have within its own resources sufficient to be able to address the question of footpaths. We have a similar example with regard to cycle lanes that were installed to both the north and south of Gorey town approximately 15 years ago, going out along the Arklow Road and the Clough Road. They are not being maintained. The local authority has stated it does not have a specified fund to clean and to maintain these, yet when it goes to TII, because it was told that it is not up to modern-day specifications, TII is not providing the funding for it. While we rightly invested a lot in active travel for new footpaths and new cycle lanes, we need to resource local authorities to be able to upgrade existing footpaths and existing cycle lanes. Part of his role has to have the Minister of State, as I am sure he will, working with local authorities to ensure they are adequately resourced to be able to address this.

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