Tom Morrissey (Progressive Democrats)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Ahern, to the House. We all know the terrible context in which we are discussing the legislation, namely the high number of people being killed on our roads. It is important for the Minister of State and his officials to hear our contributions. There are no experts guarding the secrets of success with regard to road carnage. If there were, we would not experience it every day on our roads.

It is ironic that this Bill is being set up outside of normal Civil Service structures in order to deliver flexibility and focus. Current driver testing arrangements, which are seen as core Civil Service work, are a clear indictment of inflexibility. It is good that as a result of this Bill the RSA will be able to set up PPPs and outsource driver testing. This is important.

We must focus on whether we have been placing too much emphasis on passing the test rather than educating drivers. I agree with the Minister's recent statement that a driving licence should be difficult to obtain but easy to lose. Currently it is difficult to obtain a licence, but this is not because we are setting high standards. The driving test fails young people because they must wait 12 months for a test. During this period they only serve time until they get notice of their test and then go to an instructor to cram in as many hours as possible to enable them to pass. They do not seek this instruction to make them better drivers, which could not be done in that short time. Young people are forced into this way of behaving. As a result of this system, they are forced to pay thousands of euro for insurance, but only a pittance on education.

I would like to see a change of focus to education. We should not be asking young people to pass the test per se, but to improve their driving skills. We should insist that a certain number of hours are spent on driver education. A brother of mine did his driving test in Germany 20 years ago. At the time it cost £1,500 to get a driving test there. One dare not fail the test there, or one then had to go to a psychologist to prove one was capable of driving in order to sit a second test. As a result of this system, people in Germany put more effort into education on how to drive properly.

Young people here fail the test, not because of high standards but because the test fails them. The current regime must change. Over the past 12 months the Minister has tried and failed to change the system and reduce the long delays by getting agreement on outsourcing of driver tests. I regret his attempt to change the system has failed because of union intransigence.

We must look outside the box with regard to providing tests for the hundreds of thousands of people awaiting them. I suggest we focus more on education and driver behaviour. We could, for example, take a cohort of those who have been driving for more than a year but who have failed their test — possibly for minor reasons — remove them from the waiting lists and encourage them to take ten to 15 hours of lessons from an accredited instructor in order to obtain a credit that would permit them to drive for another year. We would reduce the waiting lists and get people to spend money on education instead. Young people would spend up to €500 on driving lessons to discover their weaknesses and be credited with driver education permitting them to drive under certain conditions for a further 12 months. We could, perhaps, have a graduated system where there could be a curfew on such drivers after 11 p.m. until they had built up more experience.

The current emphasis on passing a test and allowing those who have passed to drive under the same conditions as those with 20 or 30 years experience is not right. The more we consider the education route, the better it will be for young people. There are no experts in this area. If there were, we would not have the appalling mess we have on our roads.

Senator O'Toole mentioned finger signs. We cannot even get signage on our motorways right. I drove back from Portlaoise last Sunday and watched out for signs on my way. I did not see a sign from Portlaoise to Naas informing me of the speed limit. When one drives along the M50, one sees signs every few hundred yards. South Dublin County Council has 100 km/h limits, but Fingal County Council allows speeds up to 120 km/h making it difficult for drivers to know at what speed they should be driving. Along the N11 signage is even worse. Where we have roadworks on the N7, there are makeshift signs on every piece of machinery or pylon. How legal are those signs? I imagine they are illegal and wonder whether they have been agreed with Kildare County Council under the statutory process allowing the erection of temporary signs.

Senator O'Toole asked why no Member of the Oireachtas was permitted on the authority. Why is no local authority member allowed on it? Have they done something wrong or do they lack experience? Is it because, as Department officials have said, they could go down Grafton Street and select any six people at random who would fit this board and be capable of doing the job? Is this the type of safety encouraged by the Department of Transport and is this the reason for the mess on our roads?

The contributions of Members must be taken into account in the setting of driving standards and the accreditation of driving instructors. I wrote to every driving instructor in Dublin last year and met many of them over the summer months. They said that for over 20 years nobody from the Department had ever had a meeting with them. However, they got edicts over time telling them how their careers and business would change. They are crying out for proper regulation because they know young people are going to them not looking for instruction on the way to behave on the roads. They are asking for grinds. They want to know how to turn a corner correctly. They want them to bring them to the driving test centre and show them the route. Effectively, they are grind schools and the driving instructors are annoyed about the position. They know what is going on.

In the accreditation process, a system should be brought in where young people would be required to take a certain number of lessons before being allowed to apply to do the test. The position currently is that they can apply to do the test even before they take a lesson. They get the provisional licence, apply to do the test, wait for a year and do a few lessons in the meantime. A total of 50% will fail the test and they go back into the system but it is appalling. The Minister stated that the success rate the second time around is only 56%. If any State examination had a failure rate of 56% we would be asking if the standard was too high or if the students were failing to prepare. Both are wrong in this case. The standards are appallingly low. There is no night time or motorway driving involved in the process. There is no testing on those issues yet as soon as people pass their tests they can drive away. We are forcing those young people to pay thousands of euro in insurance as a result of our negligence. I appeal to the Minister to examine that issue in a serious way.

We must consider the messages we are giving. We heard about the crime figures again today and the Minister, Deputy McDowell, said that the messages are not getting across. Gay Byrne is only in his job two months and he is frustrated. One can imagine how Eddie Shaw must have felt after a few years.

Some 40% of the surface area of a packet of cigarettes warns of the potential dangers of smoking — smoking can kill — yet one can drive a car, buy insurance and motor tax without getting any safety messages along the way. We all say the issue is about safety. Is it any wonder our safety strategy is not working as it should and that hundreds of people are being killed on our roads? We must find new ways, using cigarette packages as an example, of getting the message across at every stage of the process of driving, whether it is buying insurance or buying or taxing a car.

I am delighted the Bill is before the House. The irony is that it is providing structures that do not currently exist or that have failed. It will allow the road safety authority to out-source and form private partnerships. The reasons for doing that are focus and flexibility. We must ensure that young people are not allowed drive on our roads in an unsafe manner. The Department has failed them miserably over the years in not establishing the correct standards. Consequently, they have lost faith in the system and are merely trying to use it to pass their test. It is not about long-term driver behaviour. I agree with the points raised by Senators O'Toole and Burke about signage.