David Norris (Independent)

I welcome this debate, but I am sorry it is so adversarial. We make a mistake by taking the attitude regularly that we will have one party praising the Minister and the other attacking him for failure. This carping style does not go down well with the public, particularly when dealing with a subject as serious as road safety. The debate has not been confrontational, but the terms are, which is a pity.

It is useful that this matter is addressed in the Joint Committee on Transport, of which both Senator Dooley and I are members. Mr. Eddie Shaw appeared before the committee recently and he provided a very interesting breakdown and recommendations, including legislative recommendations. I will not summarise them here, but the Minister would do well to look at the report of the committee. The committee acts in a neutral atmosphere and that is why it is so valuable.

With regard to how gardaí form an opinion that somebody is drunk, a dreadful situation was reported on the radio recently where a woman spoke in a very dignified manner about how her husband who had a stroke was left to die on the floor of the Garda station because gardaí thought he was drunk.

On the matter of speeding, we must have consistency and coherence with regard to speed limits. They are absurd and all over the place. We will not have respect for the law unless we do something to ensure it can be respected. Some issues are quite obvious with regard to crashes. Every weekend we get the same kind of syndrome, we find a group of young people with powerful cars on secondary roads in a rural environment in the early hours of Sunday morning — quite often drink is involved. Let us examine rather than evade this issue.

There are also circumstances where the authorities have a real responsibility. I want to raise a particular case which illustrates a serious worry. I refer to a young woman called Aisling Gallagher who was killed in Mayo. Her parents have been in touch with me. She was travelling on the road after a shopping trip and was due to catch an aeroplane to America the following day. There was a temporary surface on the road. There was no warning about the use of dense bitumen macadam forming the top layer. There were markings on the road which suggested it was a full, proper surface, but it was not. There were no indications of a speed restriction.

The speed limit sign on that road indicated 100 km/h. One is not compelled to drive at 100 km/h in such a speed zone but one has a sense of safety if the authorities are of the view that when driving at 100 km/h one will be safe. Driving at even 30 km/h in this case would probably have been enough to lead to this accident. The parents in this case feel there was serious disregard for public safety because there was no safety warning and there was an inappropriate temporary surface, and this has continued to be the position since then.

This girl was only 20 years old. She had got an honours degree. She was a wonderful young, attractive, intelligent woman with her life in front of her. The National Roads Authority had outlawed the use of DBM wearing course outside 50 km/h zones, and there was a sign indicating a speed limit of 100 km/h on this road. This young girl, Aisling Gallagher, was approaching a bend in road in the village of Murrivaugh and had to reduce speed because the car in front was turning right. Immediately and unexplainedly, her car veered across the road into the path of a loaded concrete wagon coming in the opposite direction. Neither motorist had taken any alcohol and this was shown to be the case subsequently and, furthermore, neither was speeding.

The Minister needs to examine the question of road surfaces. Some are clearly done wrong. I have evidence in this case that the buck was passed from one Department to another, to the Health and Safety Authority, to the National Roads Authority and then passed back to the county council where the process began. I will send copies of this information to the Minister. This issue is serious and I believe it may have been at the root of the tragic accident involving the school bus in Trim.