Mary Henry (Independent)

It is what the reporter said. Another Minister strongly defended the pace at which the Taoiseach was travelling and spoke of good roads, good drivers and so on. That was very inadvisable, especially coming from a Minister for whom I have great respect. I was astonished because, whether one is a Minister or not, one kills people if one advises one's driver to go faster. I advise the members of the Cabinet to try to lead by example because, as I said, the laws of physics apply to Ministers and their cars.

It is probably much easier to have a Garda patrol on the Arklow bypass than on more dangerous roads so as to catch people doing 50 miles per hour when they think the law ordains that they can do 60 miles per hour. One can understand my feelings on that matter. The Garda should try to patrol the most difficult and dangerous parts of the roads, sometimes at least, so it will catch people who are driving seriously in excess of the speed limits. I know one can have an accident on motorways, but as far as I can remember from statistics I have read, motorways are the safest roads. The Garda should concentrate on areas of the roads where accidents occur.

An excuse once given to me by some gardaí was that they felt they might cause more accidents by being present with their equipment. I do not know about that; I am sure there is some way in which the matter could be resolved because one really needs to prosecute people when they are at their most dangerous.