Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response. On the issue of political will, we can see what happened in Canada as a result of one individual, our ambassador, taking the issue on board.

On the response that the RSA determined that such an agreement would not be possible without putting in danger road users in Ireland, that is a wholly unacceptable response in that all of those states will have, as I understand it, agreements with Canada. Drivers, therefore, can exchange their Alabama driving licence with a Canadian province and, ultimately, with Ireland. It is not acceptable for the RSA to say that their road safety standards are not up to our standards.

This is a matter of political will with regard to the RSA not wishing to undertake what is an onerous and lengthy task of taking on the 50 states individually but other European countries have done it. Yet, we are turning around and saying that we will accept motorists from other European counties driving here. They will accept US citizens driving in their countries, but we will not allow them to drive here. If we follow the matrix, there is no logic to the answer. The answer should be that the US has standards that are acceptable to most European countries.

We go over there and our citizens drive and end up having to take tests and to do all of that. Their citizens come over here, as our citizens do, and have to go through a rigorous process as if they had never driven in their lives. Practically, it makes no sense that we do that. Ultimately, the answer that the RSA is not accepting the driving licence system of the United States as being up to standard is wholly unacceptable and is quite frankly, a bit of an insult by the authority to our friends there. I would like the RSA to provide the Minister of State with its analysis of that as it would make for quite interesting reading. It is a somewhat wholly unacceptable answer by the authority to say that the United States does not have an acceptable driving licence system and is not an answer the Government would support.