Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

One of the amendments in this group takes account of a concern originally expressed by Senator Brendan Ryan in respect of legal professional privilege. The amendment makes it clear that when authorised officers of the DTA seek documents and records from another organisation, there is no requirement to provide documents which would otherwise be protected by legal professional privilege. As the Senator will recall, we discussed the need to make provision in respect of legal professional privilege. It was not believed absolutely necessary but in deference to what he said, we have included it.

The Bill provides that the functions of the Dublin Transportation Office should be absorbed into the DTA and the DTO will be dissolved in due course. The original Bill contained only provisions relating to the transfer of staff from the DTO to the DTA. An amendment was made in the Dáil providing that similar provisions should apply to any transferring staff of the Railway Procurement Agency, RPA. The Bill already provided that the integrated ticketing function of the RPA should transfer to the DTA. That amendment allows the RPA to designate, with the consent of the Minister, staff to be transferred to the DTA provided their principal duties relate to a function assigned to the DTA.

When I introduced the Bill to the House, I indicated that the Government had asked my Department to consider the possibility of the incorporation of the Commission for Taxi Regulation. That is consistent with the decisions being made to pursue administrative efficiencies but following examination of the proposal, it became apparent that it would be too complicated to integrate the commission into the DTA at this time. We were not able to do it in the timeframe for consideration of the Bill.

A new subsection has been added to section 76 to require the DTA and the commission to consult each other with a view to identifying administrative efficiencies in regard to the implementation of their respective functions and implementing such measures as they consider appropriate to achieve those efficiencies.

In regard to the DTA's strategic traffic management plan, amendments were made to the section on traffic management guidelines which make it clear that control of carparking revenue remains in the control of the local authorities. Further amendments were made which clarified the role of the National Roads Authority in regard to road user information systems.