Pat Gallagher (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

Section 8 gives the road safety authority power to collect information and statistics. If we go into the detail of it, and Senator Quinn summed it up well, if the road safety authority is not responsible for road signage and markings, that is a matter for the National Roads Authority and the councils.

Legislation will come before the House before the summer recess to deal with speed cameras. It will not be a matter for the Department to decide where the cameras will be located or if they will be permanent, it will be a decision for the company and the Garda, which will have responsibility for enforcement. Hopefully, that will deal with the issue in the short term.

Of course, in the long term, we must aspire to remove all accident black spots, but that cannot be done immediately. We must live in the real world. In the short term, signs or cameras should be erected at such locations so that those driving on our roads, whether national primary, secondary, regional or county roads, know of the dangers. Signs are on our roads for a good reason, to alert drivers to the fact that certain stretches of road are dangerous.

I expect that the road safety authority will liaise with the local authorities in each county and the National Roads Authority, which has responsibility for primary and secondary national roads. I am not being political when I say that over the last nine years, the budget of the National Roads Authority has increased five-fold, from approximately €350 million to €1.5 billion. That is the level of funding being provided now. In County Donegal, for example, the National Roads Authority and the county council have employed a road safety engineer who will make proposals to the local authority and, if necessary, to the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

As public representatives, we are all familiar with the low-cost safety improvement works, for which funding is provided to the local authorities separately from their mainstream funding. Even though such works apply to county or regional roads, the National Roads Authority has an input in that process. Work is prioritised on the basis of the number of accidents on particular roads and the Garda Síochána is also involved in the process.

The National Roads Authority will work closely with the road safety authority. The chief executive of the NRA appeared before the Joint Committee on Transport, made a presentation and answered numerous questions raised by committee members. It is important that the response to road safety is cross-cutting, that the road safety authority listens to the local authorities and the National Roads Authority and vice versa.

The amendment proposes changes for the sake of change and would not be in the best interests of road safety. It is not necessary to give the authority the proposed additional powers. It has sufficient powers to deal with the issues.