Derek McDowell (Labour)

Some months ago I read an article in a magazine inquiring of the reader as to the number of people that had been killed on the roads in the United Kingdom in the preceding 15 years. The number was a staggering 58,000 or 59,000. It then went on to inquire as to the number killed as a result of accidents involving airlines based in the United Kingdom in the same period and the answer was none. The magazine was looking to promote air travel for obvious reasons but it struck me that in a sense the message can be turned around. It proves the relative safety of air travel but it also proves the relative danger of road traffic. If we were experiencing the level of carnage through air travel that we do on the roads, we would be talking about grounding aircraft and taking radical action yet there is a blithe acceptance in this country, and I suspect in others, that if one travels on the roads there is at least a significant danger that one will, at some point or other, be involved in an accident which may involve injury or even death. As ordinary individuals we must ask why that is the case. Logically, it should not be the case but it is the case, more so here than in other countries.

The relative statistics indicate — I do not want to go into them in detail but I read them this morning — that it is undoubtedly more dangerous to drive on the roads in Ireland than it is, for example, in the UK, Scandinavia or even France. It is also the case that we accepted for many years, until we introduced the penalty points, that, inevitably, the number of fatalities would increase. They have not increased in other countries. The statistics suggest that in 2005 in Europe as a whole they decreased by approximately 5% and they have come down by much larger figures in other countries. There is nothing inevitable about this problem, therefore, and there is nothing particularly Irish about it.

For a long period we thought that the problem was the standard of our roads but the sad truth is that even as we have improved the standard of our roads, the number of fatalities has continued to rise. In the past week or ten days there have been fatal accidents on motorways, national primary roads, secondary roads and so on. It is clear, therefore, that road standards are not the problem either. In fact, we know the immediate causes of most fatal road traffic accidents — alcohol and speed. We have had a good deal of debate about alcohol, and I do not intend to go into that today, but we have not had anything like adequate focus on the issue of speed.

In my circle of friends, and I am sure others will have had similar experiences, people have very little time for drink driving. There is a measure of social pariah attaching to it but there is nothing like the same measure of opprobrium attaching to speed. In fact, men who would never drink and drive, and who have little time for those who do, will happily boast that they travelled at 120 km/h, 140 km/h or 150 km/h on their way to Limerick or Galway to get there in a few hours. They have no sense of guilt or of doing anything wrong but the figures from the Road Safety Council suggest that by far the biggest cause of road traffic fatalities in this country is speed and those who are most likely to speed are young drivers. In terms of the public advertising that is done by the new authority, we must focus far more on the issue of speed and put the problem of drink driving into some sort of perspective.

Again, we come back to the issue of enforcement. I holiday on occasion in South Africa, as I am sure many others do, and if one travels down the garden route out of Capetown one knows as a matter of certainty that one will be stopped or go through speed traps. It happens all the time. They are virtually constant, not in the same places, but one will be stopped on that main road. There is no such certainty here. If one travels from Dublin to Galway a dozen times the chances of passing a speed trap are not very high. The chances of anything happening if one does are even less. We must take the issue of speeding more seriously. We must have more speed traps, be they electronic or manned, and we must act upon them quickly; on-the-spot fines are by far the most effective way of deterring people.

The Bill primarily seeks to address the issue of licences. Following on what Senator Morrisey said about the question of provisional licences, we are in an extraordinary position in that 420,000 people drive on provisional licences, approximately one fifth of those who hold licences. That is an astonishingly high number. The Minister and his two immediate predecessors are on record many times as saying that is unacceptable and have talked about putting in place radical and urgent measures to do something about it. The Minister's contribution earlier contained those phrases also. I hope something good comes of it this time.

I acknowledge Senator Morrissey's point that there have been industrial relations difficulties which delayed the implementation of any improvements. That is regrettable. I do not seek to allocate blame one way or the other but it is something that must be resolved and if it cannot be resolved within the current structures, it should be resolved through outsourcing or whatever. One way or another we must get more testers in place. The Minister talked about having an additional six or seven in place now by comparison to this time last year. That is just tinkering with the system; we need far more than that. There is no prospect of getting through the ever-increasing lists if that is the sort of numbers we are talking about in terms of the improved facilities we want to provide.

Implementing a system whereby failing a driving test carries consequences is perhaps even more important than the need to reduce the numbers of people on provisional licences. Everybody is entitled to sit the test two or even three times but at this stage we must surely realise that something is wrong. Either the person in question does not take the test seriously or is incompetent and cannot drive. At the very least, we must tell people to go away and take a compulsory road safety or driving instruction course. There comes a point where if a person fails the test four or five times, which does take place, he or she must be forbidden to drive. The person can come back in a year's time after having taken a course of between six and 12 driving lessons and sit the test again but in the meantime, he or she should not be allowed to drive.

We must also take the issue of accompaniment seriously. I am aware that such a course of action would not be politically popular, which is presumably the reason why Ministers have shied away from it. However, there is an overwhelming case for insisting that people who fail the driving test more than once or twice must be accompanied by another person when they subsequently drive. We cannot allow a situation to continue whereby people fail the test, drive away alone, come back in a few years' time and perhaps do the same thing all over again.

Much of this debate has centred on various elements of road safety identified by individual Senators. I will address one or two of these issues. The issue of cyclists is particularly relevant to Dublin. The former director of traffic in Dublin City Council, Owen Keegan, was at least conscious of the need to meet the needs of cyclists in the city. If one examines the record — one can tot up the kilometres — one can also see that the provision for cyclists is hopelessly inadequate and what provision there is does not, for the most part, work. One frequently finds non-segregated pieces of tarmacadam which may be a slightly different colour on main roads which go on for 100 m. or 150 m., a gap of 50 m. then appears where the road narrows and the cycle track resumes a few hundred metres down further. Often the track will have been dug up and not replaced if it is a different colour. In any event, it is not segregated from the rest of the road. Cycling in Dublin city centre is uncomfortable and frequently dangerous.

We must examine European cities which take cycling seriously and seek to encourage it. The only serious way of doing this is by allocating some part of the roadway or pathway in a segregated fashion. Based on my experience as a member of Dublin City Council, I am aware that there is great consumer resistance to such a measure. One of the first matters with which I dealt following my election to the council in 1991 was a proposal to put a cycleway on Griffith Avenue, a wonderfully wide, tree-lined avenue on the northside of Dublin. All hell broke lose. Being a newly-elected councillor, I naively believed that cycle lanes were good, green and should be encouraged but the people of the avenue did not think so. I understand that they are still opposed to such a proposal.

If we are to take cycling seriously, we must acknowledge the necessity of providing a segregated piece of pathway for cyclists. People in Dublin would get used to it, as has happened in other European countries where cycling is taken seriously. It is the only safe measure to take because an unacceptably high number of cyclists are being killed or injured on the streets of this city.

Other speakers mentioned the issue of foreign cars and foreign drivers, an area where we must make progress. It is unacceptable that people from Northern Ireland or other jurisdictions in the EU simply ignore the rules of the road because any penalty points imposed on them in this jurisdiction will not be recognised in their own jurisdiction. This issue has been discussed at Council of Europe level but progress is needed. We must move to a situation whereby at least people in Northern Ireland know that if they infringe our laws it will be held against them in their home jurisdiction and that penalty points will be internationally recognised. Surely, such a measure would not require considerably more inventiveness or political will than currently exists.

I would be interested in finding out how we stand in terms of smart card driving licences because it would facilitate the international recognition of penalty points. I am aware that smart card licences have been in the pipeline for many years. Such licences would be a useful way of storing information in a way that would be internationally identifiable. The Minister of State can update us on progress on this issue. When I last examined it some time ago, the proposals to introduce these licences seemed to run into the next decade and I am unsure as to whether the timeline has become any narrower. This issue is increasingly important because we now have many more drivers and cars from other jurisdictions on our roads. Action is needed.

I understand that one of the authority's functions will be to take responsibility for vehicle standards sooner or later. I am aware that the former Minister of State, Deputy Callely, instituted a review of the NCT, excerpts of which were published some months ago. I gather that the entire report was not published. Could the Minister of State update us on the status of this review? On the one hand, various aspects of the NCT appear to be niggling to the public and cause a certain amount of irritation, while on the other hand, it appears that insufficient attention is paid to some of the more important aspects of the test. My car failed the NCT because there was insufficient space on the licence plate to include the Irish version of Dublin. The very pleasant Russian man who carried out the test informed me that he normally recommends including a sticker but as there was insufficient space on my licence plate, I needed to get a new licence plate. These are the kinds of issues which frustrate people. One needs to be able to distinguish between factors which seriously affect safety and other cosmetic issues which do not really matter.

This Bill is an enabling Bill in that all it does is establish an authority and allows the Minister to make regulations setting out the way in which the authority is to work. I hope the experience of the authority will be considerably more positive than that of the National Safety Council. Sadly, it appears that the council will be forever damned by the comments of its former chairman, Eddie Shaw, when he resigned his position. He effectively stated that the political will to ensure that the number of road fatalities was reduced was not there. If the awful events of the last number of months have done nothing else, they have ensured that this issue is further up the political agenda with the result that perhaps there is the political will to ensure the authority is properly resourced.