John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

I am glad to speak on the motion, which provides Opposition Members with an opportunity to voice their concerns about an area of public policy that is clearly unsatisfactory. I am somewhat surprised that the Progressive Democrats would use their time to raise an issue on which the Government has singularly failed.

Despite what I have heard from the Minister and Government speakers, problems on our roads are as bad if not worse than they have ever been in the past. The Minister and Government Senators spoke about the amount of money being spent. If that is to be used as a means of measuring the success of road safety, the Government is very successful but if the number of fatalities and serious accidents on our roads is used as a measure, the Government has made a mess of this whole area. The situation is now far worse than it ever was previously and I am surprised that such an opportunity to debate this issue would be presented to us but I intend to take it.

I agreed with much, although not all, of what the Minister said. One point that was particularly interesting was when he spoke about the working group that is examining the whole area of speed cameras. I was glad he agreed with the recommendation of the working group that the gardaí would be involved in choosing the areas where speed cameras will be sited. That is very important because there is a danger that if private enterprise were to be brought into this area it would be used purely as a means of generating revenue and would not necessarily relate to accident black-spots. I welcome the Minister's reference to that in his contribution, although I do not welcome much else therein.

Since the beginning of the year we have seen yet again a significant and steady increase in the number of people killed on the roads. I am not trying to make a political point because these accidents are very distressing for the families concerned and for all communities throughout the country. This is something on which politicians on all sides of the House should focus but I am disappointed that the Government does not appear to have grasped the nettle in that regard. Its attitude is to fire a few more million euro at the problem but we will not get any value for the money we are spending, nor will we see any significant decreases in what are the obvious indicators of the success of the road safety programme. That would be very disappointing.

As the Cathaoirleach will be aware, some 330,000 people have provisional licences, of whom 130,000 are waiting for a driving test. It is a very significant number. Despite continuous promises since 1997 that the figures would be cut dramatically, we have not seen a significant reduction. The first step to be taken is to ensure that more people pass the driving test, which would mean a higher proportion of fully licensed drivers on our roads. As the majority of accidents can be ascribed to some form of driver error, it is not good enough that 330,000 drivers have provisional licences. It is certainly not good enough that there is a delay of up to a year in some parts of the country to get a driving test. We were promised the matter would be addressed, but it was not. It is another of the broken promises in which the Government has specialised.

There has been a dramatic change in speed limits which are now set in kilometres rather than miles per hour. The opportunity was missed to introduce a more harmonised system of speed limits. There are many examples of dual-carriageways on which one can travel at limited speeds while significantly substandard national secondary roads permit travel at the full 100 km/h speed limit. It is not acceptable. Near where I live at the entrance to Waterford city on its Kilkenny side, there is a short stretch of dual-carriageway, which is the best road in south county Kilkenny. It has only a 60 km/h speed limit while the inferior road which leads to it has a 100 km/h speed limit. Quite often, Garda speed checks are mounted on what are obviously safer stretches of road rather than on the narrow, twisting, older routes on which accidents are more likely. If we are serious about tackling deaths on our roads, we must adopt a more realistic approach to speed limiting. The opportunity to adopt such an approach was when the new system was introduced, but it was missed.

While construction is taking place on only some of the Naas dual-carriageway, the entire road has a speed limit of 60 km/h. It is making what was already a disastrous scenario for commuters even worse every morning and evening. I was caught in traffic on the road this morning myself and missed a division in the House.