Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I want to speak to amendment No. 98, which is tabled in my name. The Minister of State will be aware that in the suburban settings of large cities such as Dublin, Cork, or wherever, the local authorities are regularly asked by community organisations whether three-tonne weight restriction areas, for instance, may be put in place. The local authority establishes a committee, gets Garda advice and a decision is taken. Let us say a three-tonne weight limit zone is put into a residential area to prevent heavy goods vehicles and lorries driving through a locality where ostensibly there are houses and communities. I am asking the Government, in this amendment, to apply penalty points for a heavy goods vehicle above a certain weight if it is found they are encroaching on an area. It is evident the Garda does not enforce this.

Penalty points would at least be a significant arm of enforcement in terms of a commercial company. The drivers, in effect, would not be receiving the penalty points, but the company. It is important to do this, not just from an enforcement, but also from a community viewpoint. The community looks to the local authority to enforce the law in this regard, but it is not being done.

I ask the Minister of State to give consideration to this, to extend the penalty points for this specific area, so that if heavy goods vehicles and lorries are rattling through housing estates over traffic calming measures, barriers, etc., where children are playing, there should be very strict enforcement. The way to do that is through penalty points. It has been put to me by one organisation in my area and it has asked me to seek to get it incorporated into the legislation. If it is not possible by way of this amendment, perhaps the Minister of State might give the matter some thought and come back to it in the other House. Nonetheless, it would be a sensible extension of the role of the penalty points system. It would put pressure on the Garda to enforce the law once the local authorities had established three-tonne weight limit restriction areas.