Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

Tractors must use dual carriageways to transport farm produce such as sugar beet and they often travel on the hard shoulder to ease the way for other motorists. I am afraid they will incur penalty points and I hope that will not be the case.

There is ambiguity about the random breath testing issue. The advice given to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport by the Attorney General was that such testing would be unconstitutional. However, the Taoiseach announced last week in the Dáil that random breath testing would be introduced. Our courts have been clogged with various cases taken under road traffic legislation regarding breathalyser usage. The Attorney General provided advice, which the Taoiseach contradicted in the Dáil, and this could leave the issue of random breath testing open to different interpretations, which could result in many cases being contested and numerous people escaping without conviction.

In 2003, some 335 people were killed on our roads, in 2004, 378 were killed, in 2005, 399 were killed and already this year 39 people have been killed. There has been a significant increase in road deaths over the past years. I hope the extra penalty points announced by the Minister will have the impact the system had initially. When the Minister initially announced the penalty points system, there was a significant reduction in the number of accidents and a big change in driver behaviour on our roads. I hope that when the extra penalty points are introduced it will have the same impact. The Government can do much more in regard to how drivers behave and how we do our business when travelling from A to B.

The number of motorists suspected of driving under the influence of drugs increased by 30% in 2005, yet there is no system in place to deal with drug driving. Roadside equipment is already being piloted in the UK to test for drug driving. This is an area we should examine because the level of drug taking has increased throughout the country. It is, therefore, natural to assume that if people are taking drugs, they are also driving under the influence of drugs. I drive as much as anyone at night time. When I am travelling at night, there is very little traffic on the roads, yet a huge number of one vehicle crashes take place at night, whether on national primary or national secondary routes. Everyone would like to know why is this the case. Some type of survey or independent monitoring of this aspect should take place because, while the roads are quiet and the volume of traffic is down at night time, a huge number of people are being killed on the roads then.

There are also problems in regard to motorcyclists. While one motorcyclist is killed each week on Irish roads, the Government has still to deliver on its promise to introduce compulsory basic training for motorcyclists. This was promised in 1999 and 2002 and in the national roads safety strategy 2004-06. It appears that motorcyclists are 17 times more likely to be killed than a driver of car. This represents 25% of driver deaths, even though motorcyclists represent just 2% of the total number of licensed drivers. The Government has not done much in regard to motorcyclists.

There was the episode whereby Mr. Eddie Shaw resigned because he felt the Government was not doing enough to protect road users. More than half of all drivers fail the driving test, which must point to poor driving behaviour by participants, and poor driving instruction. The Government has failed to introduce regulation of the driving instruction process. Anyone can currently set up a driving school because there are no stipulations for drivers to have a full driving licence. We need better regulation and certification of driving schools. One in six drivers on Irish roads has not yet passed the full driving test, which means they are on provisional driving licences.

The high number of provisional drivers is largely due to a 43% driving test failure rate, long waiting times and no incentive to pass the test. There is something fundamentally wrong with a system which allows almost 1,400 people to fail the test each week. The Government refuses to regulate driving instructors. It is not prepared to provide a driving structure for driver training. The driving test needs to be reformed urgently. For example, the sheet given to people who fail the test does not explain why they failed or what the position is. Something must be done in regard to these issues. The Minister did not include the use of mobile phones in the extra penalty points. The increased usage of mobile phones in cars is a contributory factor in some accidents.

While Government and Opposition parties are united in trying to solve this problem, I agree with the Minister when he says that everyone should take more care on our roads. Someone said on "Prime Time" or some other programme during the week that if we reduced our speed by 5 mph, it would greatly help the situation. The Department of Transport and the Minister are slowly putting together the Garda traffic corps. More gardaí should be assigned to this task. One way to deter people from speeding is the presence of the gardaí on our roads, particularly on the national primary and secondary routes. The public believe that the gardaí are out to catch people. If there is a Garda presence, people will automatically reduce their speed. This should not be an exercise in collecting revenue for the State. While it will cost the Government and taxpayers money to assign more gardaí to the traffic corps, the main objective of the exercise should not be to hound people but to see that they drive and behave properly, particularly on the national routes, which is not the case. The public believe that the gardaí position themselves at strategic locations to try to catch people. These locations may not be where accidents occur but where people are more likely to put the boot down.

I welcome some of the points proposed by the Minister. I am pleased he clarified the position in regard to the hard shoulder, which only applies to the motorway, and that it is not an offence to cross the white line if one is entering one's farmyard or house. Some people understood it would be an offence to cross over a continuous white line. There is much the Government can do in this regard. The Government, which has been in office for almost eight years, has done very little in that time. The public has taken advantage of the lack of activity on the part of the Government in not putting in place the proper resources to deal with this issue, which has been to the detriment of those who have been killed on our roads.

I hope the Minister of State will inform the Minister for Transport that more needs to be done in this regard. However, I agree with some of the measures he is putting in place.