Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I am disappointed at having to speak about road safety. County Donegal has had more than its fair share of young lives lost. It is cold comfort to bereaved families for me to say that we do not want people under the age of 25, who have not yet had a chance to start their lives, to be cut down so prematurely. I welcome, therefore, the concept of the strategy and hope it achieves the intended results. Whether we are driving, walking or cycling, we all have a role to play in protecting ourselves, our passengers and fellow road users. The road is a shared space.

The road safety strategy was developed with input from partners such as road engineers and gardaí. One of my problems with that arises from the recent decision to reduce the speed limit on county roads from 60 to 50 mph on the basis that local authorities could revert to the 60 mph limit. Having served on a county council, I am aware that the last thing public representatives in County Donegal or elsewhere would want is responsibility for increasing a 50 mph speed limit to 60 mph. It would not be relevant that an accident was caused by someone driving at 162 mph because the public representative would be blamed for increasing the speed limit. It would have been more sensible to maintain the speed limits at 60 mph while allowing local authorities to decrease them on dangerous roads. I asked three different Ministers to reverse their policies in this regard but was told each time that the policy was devised in partnership with road engineers, gardaí and safety experts.

Road safety has to begin with setting realistic speed limits which are enforced. In many places, so-called good national secondary roads are not good. In Donegal many of the county roads are better than the national secondary roads and yet one is expected to drive at 80 km/h. Inishowen has experienced many road deaths and some people would criticise me for asking that the speed limit be more than 80 km/h. However, people see the quality of the roads and yet they are being asked to drive at 80 km/h all over the Inishowen peninsula bar a little bit of it. If the road is safe, the speed limit should be appropriate to it. I do not believe an accident occurs because someone is driving five or ten km/h over the speed limit. In many cases, people are driving at almost double the speed limit. There is no doubt there is a number of different reasons for accidents.

In The Irish Times last week, Killian Doyle wrote an article entitled, "From the Human Race to Boy Racer". He had a cut at Donegal and the phenomenon of the boy racer. He wrote: "Donegal's roads have more doughnut marks on them than Homer Simpson's desk, and these mental midgets go by the well-known moniker of "boy racers"." We have a problem with people who seem to like the sound of their exhausts. I believe legislation is on the way from Europe which will tighten that up but we must implement it.

When I spoke to the Department about noisy exhausts, I was told it was a matter for the gardaí but when I spoke to them, they said they could not implement the rule because they could not measure the decibels. The legislation requires that one must bring the car one believes is not using the appropriate exhaust to the nearest NCT centre. Many people in Inishowen live more than 50 miles away from the local NCT centre but the difficulty is that the legislation states these cars can only be moved eight miles. Someone is ignoring a basic flaw in terms of what we expect the gardaí to do and what they are empowered to do. That needs to be addressed.

In that article, Killian Doyle attacked the gardaí on the fact they are to clamp down on boy racers. It is fair to ask what were they doing up to now if they are only to clamp down on them now. Was there a laissez-faire attitude to them? I do not believe there was but the speed limits should be imposed. The traffic corps, which we got because I and others fought the case for it, should focus on the people who cause the greatest difficulty. It should not be a case of shooting fish in a barrel whereby people driving at 35 km/h in a 30 km/h zone are more likely to be caught than those driving at 120 km/h in a 60 km/h zone.

The gardaí and the schools have done a lot of work and have brought some of those identified as being at risk of becoming dangers to themselves on the roads on a number of excursions. They took the young students to pounds where cars and other vehicles involved in accidents were taken, to the courts where they saw how people were dealt with after car accidents and to hospitals where they saw what people looked like after being involved in such accidents. There has been some very good interaction in which the gardaí have been involved. I would like the reduction in the number of accidents continue, although one is always terrified to acknowledge recent improvements because once one does, someone one knows is involved in an accident.

The noisy exhaust issue must be addressed. Many of these young people are terrorising towns. A couple of years ago, there were photographs in the newspapers of gardaí being chased around towns in my area by boy racers. That must stop. There must be some reason these young people enjoy this. How come they are back on the street even though their cars have been impounded and their licences revoked? I would like someone to give me the statistics on people before the courts. In the towns and villages of Donegal, which I do not believe are that different from anywhere else, practically everybody could give one a list of the registration numbers of cars which are causing problems. The Government should deal with this issue as a matter of priority. If these people are back on the road the next day with a new car, there is something wrong with the system. We must investigate what is wrong with a system which enables that to happen.

Targeting speed checks is important. The view of the gardaí is that if one breaks the law, that is the end of the matter. However, if someone is caught driving slightly above the speed limit and he or she is passed by someone exceeding it to a staggering degree who is getting away with it, it is very hard to bring people on board in terms of the new strategies.

Traffic islands are very important in the context of road safety. They are mostly unlit and if they are lit, they will be unlit the next time one goes past. A simple solution is to put cat's eyes or a reflective band around the base of the traffic island so it does not matter whether the light is working. The idea of painting them yellow and black is fine during the day but it does not matter at night because the paint is not florescent. The most dangerous thing one comes across driving at night is one of these unlit traffic islands. This problem could be easily remedied.

I walked into the House today and I nearly got run over by a cyclist even though there was a cycle lane. The cyclist decided to cycle on the footpath instead. Bicycles should be lit in this age of modern technology. In the past, push bicycles had a light. Perhaps this issue needs to be addressed at a European level. There is no reason a bicycle should not be lit. Going home one evening I counted 23 bicycles. There was no light of any description on 13 of them and they could not be seen. Ten bicycles had some form of lighting.

I will not get the chance to consider the question of whether single car accidents are suicides or accidents. The rural transport issue must be addressed. People living in locations like mine must have cars because rural transport is not available. There has been considerable investment in good roads. However, better roads mean faster roads. Roads must have the right speed limits which must be enforced. Motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and passengers have a role to play in road safety. If we work together, we can reduce the risk of having the history we have had in Donegal. I extend my sympathy to the families who have experienced tragedy.