Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister of State. In particular, the reassuring element here is that the Traffic Management Guidelines of which he spoke issued from the Department of Transport and in many cases may have been taken by local authorities to refer to village environments or roads in built up areas rather than to within the confines of housing estates. The fact that the Minister of State intends to restate these through his new sustainable residential development guidelines will act as a further method of enhancing in the minds of planners the necessity to ensure that speed restrictions and the management of traffic through estates is adequately addressed at the planning stage. I would welcome any further measures he might consider such as his Department putting conditions on developers to ensure a traffic safety audit of developments with more than ten houses as part of the planning process. We ensure safety audits in environmental impact statements and in other cases, and it would be helpful to carry out such audits in advance of applications being granted permission.