Brendan Ryan (Labour)

There was a report in this morning's newspaper about a person who was arrested and brought to Mountjoy Prison for non-payment of a traffic fine. This involved six gardaí arriving at the house at 6 a.m. I wonder how our police force is organised if a 6 a.m. invasion of somebody's house by six gardaí is the appropriate way to deal with the non-payment of a parking or speeding fine. We need to consider the fundamental management issue involved here in light of the slaughter on our roads and of the fact that the Attorney General has finally concluded that random breath checks are not unconstitutional.

However, we discover it will take 12 months to introduce the legislation to implement this measure. Was there no contingency plan? Was there no thinking going on? We were led to believe the legislation was all set to go, except for the constitutional issue. Now we have discovered that while the constitutional issue is resolved to the satisfaction of the Attorney General, we will have to wait a year for the legislation. If the Government wants to introduce legislation tomorrow to facilitate the Garda to carry out random breath testing, the Labour Party will make time available and accept its rapid progression through this House. I do not understand why it would take a year to do so.

The Garda Commissioner said yesterday that the Garda cannot seize uninsured cars from outside the jurisdiction in the way it can seize uninsured cars registered in this State. We should not take a year or two to amend the law to deal with this glitch either, particularly because Ireland is now, happily, a destination for work for people from many countries. We should ensure that the law is the same for everybody.

Similarly, I hope that, some time in the next 12 months, the question of mutual recognition of penalty points north and south of the Border will attract the attention of Government so progress can be made thereon. I do not understand why simple regulations that make perfect sense to most citizens take so long to progress, not through the Houses of the Oireachtas and definitely not through this House but through the peculiar labyrinths of Government. I appeal to the Acting Leader to ask the Government about this issue.

One of the world's great search engines, Google, capitulated yesterday to the Chinese Government and agreed to be censored. This is appalling. Dublin City Council and, it seems, Waterford City Council have followed Google's example by refusing to allow any poster about anything. Dublin City Council said it would not allow any poster for any purpose other than election campaigns. This is a breach of people's human rights. If the council wants to prohibit fly-posting, it should provide some other location where postering would be acceptable. Many countries do this and provide spaces for postering in respect of many issues. If the councils are to prohibit what they regard as the littering associated with fly-postering, they have an obligation to make another forum available. If not, they are effectively putting themselves into the same camp as Google and beginning to censor the citizen's right to free expression.