Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

I thank Senators again for giving this Bill a speedy passage. It enables it to start on 1 December and the Garda will now have very important powers, assuming that the Senators approve of the legislation before them. If Senator Browne wants to visit me at home I guarantee to serve a fully baked dinner. He asked about advertising. I support the advertising by the National Safety Council. It is raw but effective and it has brought the message home. I accept his point about young people. I often wonder how so many young people today have such good habits. Those in my constituency do not take cars when they are going out if they intend to drink. They did not learn that from the previous generation which drove regardless so wherever they learnt the lesson it got through to them and we should be proud of that. We have much to learn from them. However, many young people are killed on our roads.

The issue of drug testing is important. He is right that there is a great deal more to do in this difficult technical area. It is illegal to be under the influence of drugs when driving because rather cleverly all our legislation refers to "intoxicants" which are defined as including drugs. Our road traffic legislation that bans alcohol also bans drugs. Testing is the problem with drugs because they are not susceptible to breath testing. A great deal of work is being done on this involving saliva testing and so on but there is much more to do. I intend to press on with that as quickly as possible. The Senator quite rightly also referred to motorbikes. I will have a package before the House in the new year in this regard. It is crazy that 60% of motorbike riders do not have full licences. This is also a technical issue but I am determined to stop it.

Senator Dooley pointed out the need for more education and referred to the cultural aspect of this issue. He is quite right. The penalty points system is not designed only to catch people, it is intended to change the culture and habits so that if one has a licence and wants to keep it one adheres to the rules of the road. The sum of more than €1.3 million per accident is correct. Apart from the human tragedy the economic cost is very high.