Results 5,721-5,740 of 40,330 for speaker:Leo Varadkar

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: -----but I have not got it in writing yet.

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: It is not envisaged that the new plastic driving licence will be a national identity card. I do not have a problem with a national identity card, but there are no plans to introduce one. At the same time we will introduce a new social welfare card. It will be very important in cracking down on social welfare fraud to have a photograph-based social welfare and public services card. It will...

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: This is a technical amendment. At the moment it states: "if such person refuses or fails to give his or her name and address or date of birth". We want to change it to "and", lest there be confusion that a person only needs to produce one of those pieces of information rather than all of them.

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: This amendment is to section 3 which states, "Where a person is charged with an offence under subsection (2), it is a defence to the charge for him or her to show that the vehicle was being driven on the occasion in question by another person and that such driving was unauthorised." It is essentially to allow somebody to offer the defence that his or her car had been stolen by somebody else....

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: The Senators' points are well made. It is envisaged that the Road Safety Authority will run a winter awareness campaign in the next few weeks. Having ordered 150,000 tonnes of salt or 50% more than was available to us last year, we can be sure that the winter will be very warm and I will receive terrible abuse for spending millions of euro on salt.

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: Salt stocks increased from 40,000 tonnes to 100,000 tonnes and will soon reach 150,000 tonnes. There is loads of salt available.

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: If it is not yet here, it will be available in the winter.

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: If we do not need it all this winter, we will find an alternative use for it. Older cars are definitely more dangerous than newer cars. While I do not have precise statistics, I understand cars that are more than ten years old are twice as likely to be in an accident as cars that are less than ten years old. I do not know whether the reason is that older cars are more likely to be...

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: I must admit that the purpose of the amendment is to correct an error we spotted in the text. Section 5 deals with the failure or refusal of a driver to produce a licence when a requirement is made to provide a breath specimen under sections 9 and 10 of the Road Traffic Act. Essentially, one is required to produce one's driving licence if one is breath-tested under sections 9 and 10. The...

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: Road traffic legislation is one of the most heavily litigated areas of the law and that is precisely why we must be so careful about it. I would love to give the Senator that assurance but cannot. It is the job of my officials, of me as Minister, and of Members of both Houses to ensure there are no loopholes. Those are the four locks and one hopes they all work. Unfortunately, there will...

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: I thank Senator Mullen for tabling the amendment. The message is very clear - people should not drink and drive. That will always be the message we will put forward to the public. It is important to note that the law has always allowed for graduated penalties and still does so. If a person is found to have between 80 ml and 100 ml of alcohol in his or her blood, he or she is banned for...

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: Senator Mullen is correct that it is important to make a distinction between graduated penalties and graduated offences. I accept that. The limit will go to 50 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood for most drivers and that is a low limit. As Senator O'Neill noted, it will probably be less than a pint of beer, depending on the size of the person in question and other factors. The evidence is...

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: Section 8 contains a number of technical amendments to the Road Traffic Act 2010. This amendment relates to section 12 of the 2010 Act, which deals with the obligations on drivers to provide breath, blood or urine specimens following arrest at a Garda station. The amendment extends the provision so that a driver, following arrest, can be required to provide a specimen at a hospital if a...

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: If a doctor believes it would be prejudicial or injurious to the health of a patient, that doctor can direct that a sample not be taken. Having worked in accident and emergency departments for a number of years, my practical experience is that any patient who is seriously ill and requiring emergency treatment will have an intravenous line inserted either as a first or second step. It would...

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: This amendment relates to section 29 of the 2010 Act which deals with the fixed penalty notice for drink driving. Subsection (8) sets out the penalties and disqualifications in regard to certain limits. However, the blood limits are the only limits set out in the subsection. As a result, this amendment proposes to include the equivalent information in respect of breath and urine limits....

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: As I understand it, and I may not be 100% correct on this, when a person is brought to an accident and emergency department and that person is a genuine major emergency, first he or she will probably be given oxygen and, second, he or she will have an IV line inserted in a vein in order that the person can be given fluids. However, before he or she is given fluids samples are drawn to be...

Seanad: Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (29 Sep 2011)

Leo Varadkar: I will not repeat what I said during this debate or the debate earlier in the week. The House has done very good work today. Road safety has been one of the big success stories of the past ten years with road deaths falling from more than 400 deaths a year ten years ago to, hopefully, fewer than 200 this year. That has happened for a number of reasons, one being a crackdown on drink...

Issue of Writ: Dublin West By-election (4 Oct 2011)

Leo Varadkar: I welcome moving of the writ for the Dublin West by-election. Before I say anything else, it is important and appropriate to for me speak about Mr. Brian Lenihan, whose sad departure gave rise to this by-election. He was a very good constituency colleague. He always wanted to solve problems locally. He often solved them quietly rather than running to the media or the barricades as others...

Road Traffic (No. 2) Bill 2011 [Seanad]: Second Stage (4 Oct 2011)

Leo Varadkar: I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." The Bill I am introducing today will act as another key element in the transformation of road user culture in Ireland. It is more than 50 years since the first road death statistics were compiled here and, in that period, we have witnessed huge social, political and cultural change. Road safety has not been isolated in this regard. We have...

Written Answers — Road Traffic Offences: Road Traffic Offences (4 Oct 2011)

Leo Varadkar: There has been a lot of debate over the past couple of years in relation to the lower limits that should be associated with the offence of drink driving in Ireland. The Road Traffic Act 2010 will change the permissible blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limits by providing for a reduction from 80 mg of alcohol (per 100 ml of blood) to 20 mg for learner, novice and professional drivers and a...