Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 58 would not place a requirement on the Department; it would place a requirement on those issuing section 70 orders at local authority level. Given the extraordinary reluctance to monitor the provisions and that the question of road safety has been moved aside, is the pilot project also to be cut? Monitoring is regarded to be onerous, yet in earlier debates we were told pilot projects would be carefully selected. It will be the most extraordinary pilot project where not only have we rejected previously any opportunity to conduct a baseline study but there will also be no intent to monitor where the pilot scheme happens. Presumably, if the area in which the project is happening is not monitored, what is happening will not be monitored. There is a disjunct in that regard. Perhaps when the Bill reaches the Dáil, we might arrive at a point of honesty where the language of the pilot project will be entirely abandoned because that is clearly what we are looking at, unfortunately.

The Minister has stated she cannot amend the Roads Act and does not wish to engage with the amendment as it relates to the Act. It has previously been used as the rationale to reject amendments, yet amendment No. 65 provides for a direct set of actions in respect of the Act. The Minister is weighing in on a level not seen in more than 20 years. The Roads Act 1993 gave cognisance to the Wildlife Act 1976.Unless she changes her mind, the Minister is very shortly proposing to engage with all of the delicate proposals, amendments and structures for overlap between those two Acts constructed at that time which have been in place for over 20 years. I find it somewhat inconsistent that the Minister speaks about not intervening in the Roads Act in respect of my amendment but is discussing the Roads Act at the centre of her own proposed amendments a little bit later on.