Brendan Ryan (Labour)

A leaked version of the report to which Senator O'Toole referred features on the front page of today's edition of The Irish Times. Among other findings, it concludes without equivocation that Irish consumers are being ripped off. The report as leaked states that even if one takes all the other issues such as insurance into consideration, Irish consumers are still paying excessively high prices. It recommends a much more powerful body to be an advocate of consumers as well as the regulator.

However, the Department of Finance objects to such a body on the grounds of costs. It is difficult to figure that one out. One has every consumer in the country being ripped off, and for the sake of €7 million or €8 million the Department of Finance does not want an agency with the teeth and resources to deal with it. Collectively, we will pay billions to save the Department of Finance €8.5 million. Undoubtedly, the logic is peculiar.

Another newspaper report this morning suggests that Irish road haulage vehicles travelling through the United Kingdom have an alarmingly high failure rate when stopped by UK Department of Transport officials. Even more alarmingly, the failure rate in the United Kingdom is much higher than the failure rate here.

Those of us who have the misfortune to travel on Irish roads on a regular basis have good reason to be worried about the speed at which road haulage vehicles travel, the loads carried and the driving practices of many of the drivers. If one adds the fact that the vehicles themselves are unsafe, it is no surprise that we have such accident level. For the record, 3% of all vehicles on the road are heavy goods vehicles, but they are involved in 10% of fatalities. That alone ought to be a warning to us as should the British figures.

I call for a debate in this House on road safety yet again. Last night, there was another series of horrific accidents. In the course of the debate, we should talk about driver testing. It is astonishing that more women than men fail driving tests whereas insurance companies have unquestionable evidence that women are better drivers than men. This raises a serious question.