John Gerard Hanafin (Fianna Fail)

I wish to take up an issue raised yesterday and ask for a debate on road safety. This House and the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business have assisted the insurance companies in recent years, putting in place the Personal Injuries Assessment Board and the Motor Insurance Advisory Board, so much so that in the past three years the profitability of insurance companies rose from €400 million to €700 million, and to €1 billion last year.

There is an onus on those companies to provide as a loss leader a facility for drivers aged between 18 years and 27 years who install a speed restrictor in their cars. I do not refer to a speed regulator but to a restrictor which would set a maximum speed. The insurance companies should offer significant reductions in premiums for young drivers who use this device.

The European Commission has said we must phase out the high vehicle registration tax, VRT, over the next ten years. This provides a wonderful opportunity to reduce to the lower VRT rate, cars listed by the new car assessment programme as having five-star safety features, the same as that for hybrid cars.

I would like a debate on the communications industry and particularly on the profits of the two major players, Vodafone and O2. I commend the regulator on the competition introduced into this area. Nevertheless, we continue to pay the highest charges per head for mobile phone use in Europe. That must be examined.

We should have a debate on the Middle East and particularly the situation in Iran. The Iranian Government has refused the offer from Russia of the uranium it needs for peaceful nuclear energy. That is significant in light of what an Israeli army general said recently. When asked how far the Israelis would go to prevent the Iranians gaining a nuclear capacity, he was very precise, stating, "Two thousand kilometres". I call for a debate on the Middle East.