National Vehicle and Driver File, Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2026: Second Stage

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." Before I start, I wish Deputy Michael Healy-Rae a quick recovery from the horrible attack yesterday evening in Dublin. I spoke to him last night. He was in good form and on his way back home. He and his family need time for him to recover. It has been such a harrowing experience. I am delighted to see that an arrest has been made, and we will leave that with An Garda. It is very concerning for everybody that something like that could happen in broad daylight in our capital city. I am pleased to bring the National Vehicle and Driver File, Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2026 before the House. This is a practical Bill but its purpose is significant. It is about making sure that the law that supports road safety, vehicle compliance, enforcement and public administration is modern, clear and fit for purpose. The policy rationale is straightforward. The State must be able to use accurate vehicle and driver information lawfully and responsibly. Local authorities must have the collision data they need to identify risks and target action. Enforcement systems must work efficiently. The Bill also advances the Government's digital agenda and improves the efficiency of public service delivery. The law on motor tax, vehicle records and speed limits must reflect how services are now delivered and how road safety decisions are now made. There is also a practical necessity. Much of the legislation being amended was designed for a paper-based system. It assumed the display and surrender of discs. It contains data provisions that predate the general data protection regulation and does not fully reflect current systems for vehicle licensing, compliance checking or the use of road safety information. The Bill updates that framework. It gives public bodies legal certainty. It also gives the public confidence that the system is operating properly. Above all, there is a road safety imperative. Better information supports better decisions. Better enforcement supports better behaviour. Easier verification supports better compliance. Road safety is not secured by one measure alone. It depends on safer behaviour, safer infrastructure, effective enforcement, reliable data and clear responsibilities. In practical terms, the Bill does a number of things. It modernises the national vehicle and driver file; underpins the Check My Vehicle service; removes the need to display a paper motor tax disc; allows open-ended declarations for non-use; supports more flexible and evidence-based speed limit management; provides a statutory basis for sharing collision data with local authorities; clarifies the operation of penalty points in multi-offence incidents; and makes targeted improvements to court and enforcement procedures. I will deal briefly with each Part of the Bill. Part 1 contains the preliminary and general provisions. It provides for the Short Title, commencement, collective citation, construction, definitions and repeals. These are technical provisions but they matter. They give the Bill its legal structure. They also remove provisions that are obsolete, superseded or no longer consistent with the policy changes being made. Part 1 repeals older provisions on the display of vehicle licences, non-annual payment of motor tax, obsolete notification arrangements and the offence of failing to display a motor tax disc. It also amends a provision of the Road Traffic Act 2024 so that the approach to special speed limits can be adjusted later in the Bill. Part 2 deals with the national vehicle and driver file, NVDF, and the Check My Vehicle service. The NVDF is the State's central database for vehicle and driver information. It supports vehicle registration, driver licensing, motor tax, enforcement and road safety. The current statutory framework is pre-GDPR and general in nature. Part 2 modernises that framework. It sets out more clearly the records and data held on the file. It includes appropriate data protection provisions for personal data. Part 2 also places access to NVDF data on a clearer footing. Where bodies need information to carry out their functions, access can be provided for in secondary legislation. The legal basis and purpose can then be set out clearly. This includes bodies such as An Garda Síochána and the Revenue Commissioners. The objective is simple: access must be lawful, transparent, proportionate and linked to the function being performed. This Part also underpins the Check My Vehicle website. A person will be able to enter a vehicle registration number and check certain information held on the NVDF. That includes the status of motor tax and roadworthiness tests. It will not disclose the owner's name or address. As paper discs are removed, this service will provide a clear way to verify compliance. That will be useful for car buyers, driver testers, driving instructors and others who have a practical need to check relevant information. Part 3 removes the requirement to display a paper motor tax disc and makes the related changes needed across older legislation. This measure forms part of the wider paperless discs project, under which physical insurance and roadworthiness discs will also be abolished. The requirement to display a disc belongs to a paper-based system. Compliance can now be verified through electronic records. The law should reflect that. The Bill therefore repeals the offence of failing to display a motor tax disc. It does not remove the obligation to have motor tax. The offence of not having motor tax will be capable of being dealt with as a fixed-charge offence. Part 3 also removes outdated references to surrendering, taking back or displaying paper discs. This includes references to refunds, bouncing cheques and driving tests. A vehicle licence will be deemed to be issued when the owner receives a receipt for payment, either in a local authority motor tax office or through the online motor tax service. Part 4 deals with declarations of non-use of a motor vehicle. At present, a vehicle can be declared off the road for a period of between three and 12 months. This can create unnecessary administration where a vehicle remains off the road for longer or where the period is uncertain. Under this Bill, a declaration may be made in the last month of motor tax and may continue indefinitely until the vehicle is brought back into use. This will simplify the process for vehicle owners and reduce avoidable renewals. It will also prevent arrears arising simply because there is a gap between the end date of a declaration and the next taxing of the vehicle. The Bill makes clear that arrears will not apply to the first application for motor tax following an open-ended declaration of non-use. The integrity of the system is also protected. It will be an offence to use a vehicle while a declaration of non-use is in effect. The Bill also provides transitional arrangements. Declarations already in force will end on the date specified in the declaration. If the vehicle remains off the road after that date, a new open-ended declaration will be required. Part 5 concerns speed limits. This Part makes targeted amendments to the Road Traffic Act 2004. The purpose is to make sure that road authorities retain the flexibility they need within the national speed limit framework. It allows local authorities to set a special speed limit of 60 km/h on local roads in built-up areas where that is appropriate This is necessary because the Road Traffic Act 2024 changes the default speed limit position. Without this amendment, local authorities could lose the legal power to apply a 60 km/h special speed limit to certain local roads in built-up areas, even where road circumstances and traffic planning justify it. That was never the policy intention. Part 5 also allows for a special speed limit of 100 km/h on national secondary roads, including national secondary managed roads. This supports the next phase of speed limit reform. Under that phase, the default speed limit on national secondary roads is to be reduced from 100 km/h to 80 km/h. Where a road authority considers that a particular national secondary road meets the criteria in the speed limit guidelines, it should be able to retain a 100 km/h limit through special speed limit by-laws. Speed limits are among the most visible parts of road safety policy. They influence behaviour. They affect stopping distances and the severity of collisions. These amendments do not weaken speed limit reform. They help ensure reform can be implemented sensibly, lawfully and consistently by the authorities best placed to understand local road conditions. Part 6 contains a number of important road traffic and roads amendments. The first allows a jury to consider the lesser charge of careless driving where a defendant is acquitted of dangerous driving. This amendment arises from Mr. Justice Haughton's report on the death of Shane O'Farrell in 2011. Where the evidence may not establish dangerous driving to the required standard but may establish careless driving, the court process should be able to reflect that. Part 6 also provides a legal basis for local authorities to receive and process road traffic collision data from An Garda Síochána or the Road Safety Authority. The data may be used for specific road safety purposes. These include identifying and assessing safety risks on public roads, targeting maintenance or construction, and supporting the proper allocation of resources. This Part also provides for nominated local authorities where two or more local authorities agree that one authority should perform a specified executive function on their behalf. This is a central road safety provision. Local authorities require robust information to identify collision-prone locations, assess emerging risks and target engineering interventions. Collision data helps them move from reacting after incidents occur to identifying patterns and intervening earlier. The Part also clarifies the application of penalty points in multi-offence incidents where a driver is disqualified. Recent legislation introduces the concept of a multi-offence incident. That means that where several penalty point offences arise from the same incident, more than one set of points may be endorsed. A practical difficulty can arise where fixed-charge notices from the same incident are paid at different times and a driver has already been disqualified before a later, higher set of points is notified. The Bill makes clear that the swapping-in of penalty points will not apply where the driver has already been disqualified. This avoids having to dismantle and reconstruct an existing disqualification. There is no appropriate legal basis for doing that. It could also unfairly advantage or disadvantage the driver, depending on the sequence of notifications. Part 6 also provides for operators of mobile safety camera vans to give certificate evidence in court where a fixed-charge notice is not paid. This means they will not have to attend in person to give testimony in every case. It is a practical enforcement measure. It supports the efficient presentation of evidence and helps ensure road traffic enforcement can operate effectively. Taken together, the Parts of the Bill form a coherent package. Part 1 clears away obsolete provisions. Part 2 modernises the NVDF and supports public access to defined vehicle information. Part 3 removes the paper motor tax disc requirement while maintaining the obligation to have motor tax. Part 4 simplifies declarations of non-use and Part 6 strengthens court, enforcement and evidence-led road safety functions. The Bill is technical in places but its public purpose is clear. It makes dangerous behaviour easier to detect, it makes lawful compliance easier to verify, it gives local authorities better information for road safety work and it ensures that the legal framework keeps pace with modern systems and modern expectations. It also supports the Government’s Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030. This strategy aims to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 50% by 2030 and move Ireland towards Vision Zero by 2050. Strategies must be matched by practical action and this Bill is one such action. The Bill asks the House to support measures that are reasonable, targeted and necessary. It allows data to be used lawfully and responsibly where it can improve road safety. It modernises a motor tax system that should reflect the digital age. It gives local authorities the information they need to make roads safer. It supports speed limit reform and strengthens the practical operation of enforcement. Above all, it asks us to recognise that road safety is a shared responsibility. Every death on our roads is a life ended. It is a family changed forever and it is a community left to ask whether it could have done more. We cannot normalise poor road-user behaviour and we cannot allow outdated systems or avoidable legal uncertainty to stand in the way of road safety. The Bill is a necessary step in reversing current trends, strengthening accountability and building a more modern, evidence-led and future-focused road safety system. I commend the Bill to the House. I acknowledge the officials in the Department who have worked tirelessly on this. I also acknowledge the work of the Ministers, Deputies Lawless, Naughton and Chambers, previous Ministers of State in this position who helped to formulate the Bill in their time at the Department. I thank everybody for their support.

No, it is documentation for me.

At first glance the Bill appears to be technical and administrative, dealing with databases, record keeping, data sharing arrangements and, as the Minister of State said, motor tax and various amendments. I know that other amendments are to come on Committee Stage and we look forward to hearing about them. Following the M9 crash, the Minister of State said legislation is being prepared, following discussions, and we look forward to seeing what the amendments will be. A lot of elements in the Bill are sensible and long overdue. It modernises the national vehicle and driver file and introduces open-ended non-use declarations. The legislation finally delivers on a commitment to introduce provisions to facilitate the sharing of collision data with local authorities and this is also welcome. While the Government asks us to focus on the administrative reforms, there are families throughout Ireland facing a different reality in the midst of the growing road safety crisis. Road death numbers are going in the wrong direction despite what is happening across Europe, where deaths are decreasing. Dangerous driving is becoming increasingly common. Communities see less Garda traffic enforcement and we know that since 2009 the numbers in the Garda road traffic unit have decreased by about 600. Last year, they went up by five or six but clearly this is not enough. No more than in dealing with public order on the streets, we need visibility to deter people from breaking road traffic laws. Too many families are suffering and, at a time when people are deeply concerned about safety on our roads, the legislative priorities should be stronger enforcement, policing resources and investing in black spots and rural road safety. This administrative Bill is focused largely on databases and processes, and motorists are entitled to ask the simple question as to what problem it actually solves. That is why we look forward to seeing what amendments will come on Committee Stage. At the moment the Bill will not stop reckless speeding or dangerous overtaking, put more gardaí on the roads or make junctions safer. Some of the people who came before the transport committee emphasised the importance of proper design in towns and villages, in particular to ensure road safety. They also emphasised the importance of the visibility of gardaí. These are the ways in which we can save lives on the road and make sure the trend in road deaths starts to decrease or at least halt. Vision Zero by 2050 seems an awful long way off. The truth is that the Bill does little to address the issues that are keeping communities worried and anxious. This year has been the deadliest year on our roads since 2010, with 120 people already having lost their lives. This should set off alarm bells because every road death, as the Minister of State mentioned, is more than a statistic; it is a son or daughter whose future is cut short, a family grieving and a community traumatised. Road deaths are not inevitable. They are not unfortunate accidents. They are often the consequence of a lack of investment, policy failures, enforcement failures and investment failures. For years road safety campaigners, communities and Garda representatives have been warning that visible traffic enforcement is declining. An awful lot of money has been spent on a lot of road safety campaigns, which some experts who have come before the committee have said do not work. Visible enforcement is one of the strongest deterrents. When drivers believe there is little chance of being stopped, compliance declines and risk-taking increases. Communities throughout the country are reporting growing levels of dangerous behaviour on our roads. When Sheila Gilheany of Alcohol Awareness Ireland came before the committee, she showed us statistics and compared the likelihood of being stopped by the police in Australia with the likelihood of being stopped in Ireland. The statistics showed that when people in Ireland go out to drive at night, they do not think they will meet a garda, whereas in Australia the opposite is the case and there is a much higher rate of random stops by police. If my memory serves me correctly, the number of people who die on our roads with alcohol in their system is way higher than it is in Australia because the deterrent effect is there with far more random stops. The number of people stopped on our roads has collapsed compared with 2009. The Minister of State mentioned the non-display of road tax. I ask him to encourage the local authorities and the Garda not to prosecute people any more for failing to display a tax disc on their car.

This legislation is long overdue to address a number of technical issues and, in particular, to legislate for the sharing of collision data. Since late 2023, local authorities have been unable to receive vital Garda collision data. While the Department did provide for the partial sharing of this data, there is a legitimate question to be asked as to why it has taken nearly three years for the issue to be resolved. Without all of this data, local authorities, which are responsible for maintaining the majority of the State's road network, face significant barriers in implementing road safety measures. This clearly should have been an urgent priority for the Government, yet it has taken years to get to this point and it has caused delays to many road safety measures. On the broader issue of road safety, the latest road fatality statistics show that 2026 is likely to be the deadliest year on Irish roads since 2010. Road fatalities are up 17.8% so far in 2026 when compared with the same period last year. This demonstrates that Ireland's roads are becoming more dangerous. Each road fatality statistic represents a life lost and a wider family devastated, and it demonstrates the constant work needed to make our roads safe for all who use them. The Government's target of halving road deaths by 2030 is moving further out of reach. Despite these trends, the Government has ignored the overhaul that is needed in road safety policy and governance, which was recommended in the 2024 Indecon report. This failure in road safety is seen at a national level. In my constituency, many towns and villages across Galway have seen road safety projects delayed and this is having a significant impact on the people who live in these areas. One example I would like to raise is that of Kilmeen Cross in County Galway, which the Minister of State will be familiar with. This is an area where there have been a number of serious accidents. A road safety scheme was first proposed there years ago, including lights and a roundabout, but it has been left in limbo for years. It has been passed back and forth between the council and TII, with no clarity as to when it will be progressed and no funding allocation to begin construction works. That needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. We also have the example of pedestrian crossings and traffic calming on the national road through Kinvara, which has been held up for 20 years. We have the example of Bridge Street in Dunmore. This is also a national road where there has been a failure to progress the regeneration and road widening project. Residents have again been left waiting years for that to happen. These are the basics that we need to get right to prevent tragic incidents from occurring on our roads. It is not acceptable for crucial schemes, like the ones I outlined, to be left stuck in limbo for years. The Government and TII need to get their act together and get these schemes progressed. Another aspect I would like to raise is the failure of the Government to adequately resource the Garda roads policing unit and the poor level of speed limit enforcement. I have raised many times with the Minister of State that there are only 58 speed camera vans responsible for monitoring speed limits across 1,900 camera zones. Likewise, only a handful of fixed speed cameras are operating across the State. We cannot say that this is effective enforcement, especially when we know that speeding is one of the leading causes of road collisions. The Government cannot continue to treat rising numbers of fatalities on our roads as isolated incidents. The reality here is that rising numbers of fatalities reflect fundamental failures within the Government's approach to road safety, including the failure to adequately resource the Garda roads policing unit, the failure to invest in road safety measures and the failure to reform wider road safety policy and governance. The time to act is now to save lives on our roads and ensure that our roads are as safe as possible for all who use them.

Go raibh maith agat. Cuirim fáilte roimh an deis labhairt ar an ábhar seo. There are sensible provisions in this Bill that Sinn Féin can support. Giving local authorities access to collision data from An Garda Síochána and the RSA should help to identify dangerous locations and target investment. Allowing a jury to consider careless driving where there has been an acquittal on a charge of dangerous driving is also reasonable. Modernising the national vehicle and driver file and removing unnecessary bureaucracy also makes sense, of course. I have to say, though, that legislation alone will not make our roads safer. We can pass new laws, create databases and introduce enforcement mechanisms, but none of that will make a blind bit of difference if there are not enough gardaí in our communities and on our roads to enforce the laws. The justice committee, which I chair, heard evidence this week from Garda management and the Garda representative bodies on Garda pursuits and roads policing. This followed some horrific incidents over the summer, including the tragedy on the M9. What we heard should be of concern to everyone in this House. There are serious deficiencies in the number of gardaí trained to undertake vehicle pursuits, while roads policing numbers have actually declined by 40% since 2009. How did we reach a situation where gardaí encountering someone driving a stolen car recklessly, potentially putting innocent lives at risk, have not been given the specialist training and resources needed to respond? We know that a pursuit will not always be the safest response, and public safety always has to come first, but gardaí need to have options. They need the capacity to close roads quickly, to deploy stinger devices where appropriate, to co-ordinate air support and, where necessary and proportionate, to conduct a properly managed pursuit. That requires training and equipment, but above all, it requires gardaí, and we still do not have enough gardaí in our communities. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have absolutely failed in that regard, and they are still not going to reach their too-low targets. Communities see the consequences of this. There are restricted Garda station opening hours, insufficient community gardaí and reduced Garda visibility on our roads. This all needs to be addressed. I want to speak briefly about the whole issue of speed vans. I meet people daily who tell me that they believe that speed camera vans are positioned not where they will be most effective in saving lives but where they are most effective in revenue raising. The perception exists that the vans are located in places where the highest number of fines will be raised. That undermines confidence in road safety enforcement. Speed enforcement has to be about saving lives, not raising revenue. Camera deployment should be transparently based on collision risk, road design, speeding patterns and road safety evidence. If this Bill improves collision data sharing with local authorities, then that information should also guide enforcement towards where it saves lives. We also need to have confidence in the national car test, NCT, system. In 2025, the latest figures we have, approximately 58.4% of vehicles that were tested in Cavan failed their NCT, which was the second highest percentage in the State. In Monaghan, there was a failure rate of 57.8%, the fifth highest nationally. Of course, there might be some legitimate explanations, including maybe vehicle age and mileage, but motorists and people in my constituency deserve more than assumption. The principle has to be that the same car should have the same prospect of passing its NCT whether it is tested in Monaghan, Cavan, Dublin or anywhere else. I have asked the Minister for Transport to investigate the disparities in the NCT pass rates and to compare like with like in respect of vehicles of similar age, make, model and mileage, as well as the defects recorded and outcomes at different centres. I say this because in my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan, like many rural constituencies, a car is not a luxury. It is essential for work, school, healthcare and everyday life. An NCT failure can have quite profound impacts. It means repair bills, retest costs and serious inconvenience, and that needs to be dealt with. Many people would attribute any NCT failure they have had to the state of the roads they are forced to drive on daily. I again put on the record that it is inconceivable and inexcusable that the Government has again this year allocated less money to Cavan and Monaghan to fix local roads, at a time when costs are increasing and when roads are in the most deplorable state I have witnessed in all my time in politics. I am referring to local tertiary roads in particular. Let us modernise the national vehicle and driver file and improve collision data sharing, absolutely, but it has to be recognised that legislation is only one part of road safety. We need an NCT system that people can trust, roads that are fit for purpose, speed enforcement targeted at dangerous roads, and, arguably most important, we need enough properly trained gardaí with the equipment and resources necessary to actually keep those roads safe. No database, speed camera or new law can replace trained gardaí on the ground and that is, above all, the challenge that this Government must finally address.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on road safety. It is an issue and concern for so many people. We have seen the recent horrific incidents on the M50 and the M9. Such is the fear in this regard that we have had reports since then of 75,000 fewer people taking the motorways in recent weeks. I too am a member of the justice committee. This week, we heard from members of An Garda Síochána. They confirmed to us that there is not one garda in the State, as I speak here today, who is trained in pursuit. If I know this, and we all know this, we had better believe that criminals out there know this too. It is 2026, and not one garda in the State is trained to pursue a vehicle that drives away at speed or refuses to stop. This is absolutely shocking. Any member of the public I have spoken to during the last couple of weeks, since this information got out, has found this unbelievable. People want to know, and it is a legitimate question, how this has been allowed to happen. I spoke at another debate yesterday. At that same meeting, a member of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, AGSI, brought out a document from 1988 that said gardaí were going to get pursuit training. It has not happened. That is 38 years ago. I think I used the analogy of 1988 being the year in which Ray Houghton stuck the ball in the England net, and we still do not have a garda trained to pursue any fleeing vehicle. There is also the issue of e-scooters and scramblers being used to terrorise people on our streets. The Government brought in legislation to tackle the use of scramblers after the tragic death of Grace Lynch, yet people in my community, and in communities across Dublin and across Ireland, will tell you they have not seen any change. Gardaí need to be trained and resourced to tackle this problem. Gardaí cannot safely intervene if doing so is a danger to the public, but it is also a danger to the gardaí if they have not received the proper training. We have been telling the Government from this side of the House for years, for decades, that there has been a problem with scramblers, yet it took the death of a beautiful young girl for the Government to act. It is being reactive again to a situation and not proactive. The Government also brought in regulations in relation to e-scooters to deal with the number of young people suffering from acquired brain injuries but it was another reactive response. We have been telling the Government for a long time that this has been a problem in our communities. What we heard this week in the justice committee was shocking, coming from the Garda itself. It told us we will see an increase in the number of people having scramblers and e-scooters taken off them or being prosecuted for either not wearing high-vis clothing or a helmet. It told us they are the people probably using them in a legitimate way, going to work or for legitimate business. They are the people who will feel the full weight of this law because they might have forgotten their helmet or high-vis. This is because, generally, these people are compliant and law abiding so if a garda asks them to stop, they will, but the lads running amok in my community and others across Dublin using e-scoters for drug dealing or intimidation will not stop; they will flee. The problem then is the gardaí do not have the training to then pursue them. It is a catch-22. The Minister said in relation to pursuit training that the Government would make it a priority to get gardaí trained. We heard at the justice committee this week - if the Minister of State gets a chance, he should listen back or read the transcript - that by the end of this year, despite the urgency, only six gardaí will have the proper training. Another issue in the news this week involved a high-profile English football player who was arrested for dangerous driving and possession of nitrous oxide. I have raised this before. I have heard anecdotally from people contacting me that this is an issue in our areas. Young people have been seen driving around with balloons, which contain nitrous oxide. It is a dangerous situation. Anybody doing this is reckless and they need to stop. I said at the time we need to bring in roadside testing for nitrous oxide so if someone is under the influence of nitrous oxide, a roadside test can be undertaken. That might deter people from taking nitrous oxide and driving. We do not need a situation where we name another law after another fatality. We have a chance to bring in this testing. I urge the Minister of State to have a look at that.

I welcome the opportunity to debate this Bill on Second Stage. I look forward to tabling amendments on future Stages. Any debate such as this is always emotional because we often think of somebody we know who has been hurt or whose life has been prematurely lost on our roads and we automatically assume the legislation and enforcement are in place to ensure our safety on the roads. This is a welcome step but as the Minister of State accepted in his opening remarks, no one law or policy will be robust enough to ensure our roads are safe. I place no personal blame on anybody for this but it is intriguing that while we are, in comparison with our EU colleagues, quite below the average as regards road fatalities, I am concerned, as a youth worker and a dad of young people considering entering the roads as drivers, that for the age cohort of 16 to 25 years, we are disproportionately represented in fatalities. Our policy, training response and legislative response need to be evidence based and must have that in mind. Over the summer, I launched the idea of a driver theory test programme that would really look at that evidence and robustly engage with the next generation of road users, whether drivers, cyclists, e-scooter users or pedestrians. For a very small sum of annual funding - it is fully costed at about €5.5 million - 50 development officers could be hired in the RSA and sent out to schools to give a universal driver and road user training programme that would culminate in a fully funded driver theory test. We all know in this Chamber that to take control of a vehicle of any type is to take control of a significant weapon, yet what we have seen in cultural norms and behaviours that have evolved online or in person is that sometimes reality and perception are very different in that generation. This initiative would provide universal training in transition year or fifth year, in youth services or youth clubs to ensure young people can see, feel and learn the realities of what it is to be a road user behind the wheel of a car, as a pedestrian or a cyclist. I ask the Minister of State and his officials to consider that as part of budget 2027. It already happens ad hoc. I accept the RSA has a training programme but we are relying on teachers and gardaí in the community who are already overburdened with work and cannot do it robustly and universally across the State. This is an attempt to offer that. As part of the legislation, the Minister of State spoke about removing the need for physical tax discs in vehicles. I have had a bone to pick with this Government since I was elected a couple of years ago. I have always felt irked that I pay 13% more each year for my road tax if I do not have the funds to pay for it annually versus paying for it every three months. That is punitive. The costs are not representative of that punitive damage of 13%. It is certainly not 13% more in administrative costs to produce the discs, send a reminder email or post it out every three months. The Government now has an opportunity and I am offering something of a political win for the Minister of State. If there are no more hard copies of tax discs, that negates the need for any discrepancy between the cost of taxing your car every three months and doing so every 12 months. Only a certain cohort can pay upfront for 12 months. A lot of people cannot. We want people to continue taxing their cars and paying the tax. Let us do away with the 13% difference because all that does is punish people who cannot afford it. I was a councillor for a few years before I was elected to the Dáil. I could never understand how the body responsible for designing our roads never had access to collision data. I welcome that this is part of the legislation. It has the potential to ensure real-time engineering solutions are provided in hotspots or prevalent collision areas. I am worried it could become a bureaucratic mess to access data. While there is a legislative route, will the Minister of State provide more detail as to what that will look in practice for local authorities? Will there be a live interactive map updated consistently? Will there be certain thresholds of collisions? I will give the example of the R403 in Kildare. It is probably the longest stretch of straight road in the country. I have yet to find someone who disagrees with me. It is about 10 miles long, possibly even more and it is ruler-straight. At certain times of day, people are driving into stark sunshine at sunrise or sunset. It is also collision-heavy at crossroads. There have been tragedies along that road very recently and throughout the past decades. That the council did not have access to that information in a timely way to bring in engineering solutions does not make sense. I welcome this measure but I ask for further information as to how that communication will be conveyed between the Garda and the local authority. The Government has missed a trick in some ways. I commend the response with regard to e-scooters over the summer. The Social Democrats had a different proposal, which was to register e-scooters. People would have had to register those vehicles in the same way as a car or anything else. We could still go a way towards doing that as part of this review. If the Minister of State is considering that, he has my full support because it is as dangerous a weapon as many of the other weapons we ask be registered in the State. That is another consideration. I do not want to repeat the points already made but I attach myself to the sentiment that even with the best will in the world of all of us here, including the Minister of State's officials in the Department who put together this strong legislation, proper enforcement and education are needed. The legislation is only one part of that jigsaw. I have put some proposals on education before the Minister of State that I ask him to consider. Equally, I ask him to convey that message on enforcement to his colleagues in the Cabinet. The gardaí we have are doing what they can, but we can all agree that the bodies on the ground are not there, the training is not there and ultimately the back-up from society is not there to support them so that when they need to intervene, we will back them as opposed to them being prosecuted for trying to get involved in these incidents. I look forward to contributing to this discussion further on Committee Stage and commend the Minister of State on the work so far.

I also welcome the Bill. It is important, as my colleague said, we empower local authorities and the Road Safety Authority, RSA, to enhance their data-sharing arrangements. There are also other welcome aspects to the Bill. I will pick up where my colleague left off and speak about my constituency. There is a serious crisis with the lack of enforcement. We have met and engaged with the parents of Grace Lynch, Martin and Siobhán, and I still engage with them on an ongoing basis. What is clear from speaking to them and constituents who contact me, and from speaking to people living in Ballymun and Finglas this week, is that despite the introduction of Grace's law, things are as bad as ever. One resident from Finglas I spoke to today said that every time they leave the house, they encounter a scrambler or a scrambler-type e-bike travelling dangerously on the roads, paths, green areas and parks. Last week, while they were on their way back from Tolka Valley Park on the Cardiffsbridge Road near Dunnes Stores, an individual wearing a balaclava came across the road in front of the traffic from Deanstown Avenue and onto the green opposite. The resident said it is intimidating and people in their cars look fed up. It is utterly unacceptable that this is still the case. I met one of the assistant commissioners in An Garda Síochána last week who confirmed there is an issue around the EU Presidency with Garda resources being diverted away, that it does not have sufficient resources to implement and enforce and that is frustrating. It is accepted that communities such as Ballymun and Finglas need high-visibility policing to enforce these rules to ensure the communities are safe but it is not being delivered. They also need youth diversion programmes and support in that. It is frustrating that the issues of road safety in relation to e-scooters and scramblers in the community are as bad as ever and it is not right. It is not acceptable. The concern is, as has been said, that this involves more promises without delivery. Injuries continue to happen. We have seen the figures from the hospitals. Grace Lynch's parents plead with us and the Minister of State to try to avoid another tragic death but it is still happening. We need to see more action and resourcing and, as my colleague, Deputy Farrelly, put forward, the idea of registering e-scooters seems like a sensible proposal. We need action on that and we need enforcement because every community has the right to be safe. Tá sé tuillte ag gach pobal a bheith sábháilte agus tá gá acu leis sin. Tá níos mó gardaí ag teastáil ó Bhaile Munna agus Fionnghlas chun é sin a chinntiú. We need more gardaí on the ground to enforce but they need training. It is absolutely scandalous that only six gardaí will receive pursuit training before the end of the year. That is absolutely not acceptable. I will continue to push on this to ensure gardaí have sufficient resources and are trained and that our communities are safe. We know e-scooters and scramblers are being actively used in drug dealing and intimidation by drug gangs and the most vulnerable disadvantaged communities are bearing the brunt of that. They have as much a right to be safe as everyone else in the country so we need to see serious action on that.

Every one of us knows families and communities who have been affected by serious road traffic collisions and behind every statistic is a person, family and community whose lives have been changed forever. That is why we have a responsibility to ensure our laws, enforcement systems and road infrastructure are as effective as possible in preventing collisions and reducing harm. That is why I welcome the Bill. While much of it is technical in nature, its purpose is straightforward. It is about making our roads safer, ensuring public bodies have access to better information, modernising how key road traffic systems operate and strengthening the legal framework that underpins many aspects of our road safety policy. One of the most important aspects of this Bill is the provision allowing collision data collected by An Garda Síochána to be shared more effectively with local authorities. Too often we hear concerns from local communities about dangerous stretches of road, recurring collisions or persistent safety issues. Residents know there is a problem but decisions can be delayed because the necessary data are not readily available. That is why provisions relating to speed limits are important. Speed limits are among the most important tools available to improve road safety data. They influence the likelihood of a collision occurring and the severity of its consequences when it occurs. The flexibility provided under this legislation in speed limit implementation is sensible. However, these decisions must remain firmly evidence-based and factors such as road design, collision history, traffic volumes, nearby development and the presence of vulnerable road users must continue to guide decision-making. When we discuss road safety, we cannot focus exclusively on motorists, pedestrians and cyclists. Children travelling to school, older people and people with disabilities also have a right to use our roads safely. For those road users, even relatively small reductions in vehicle speed can make a significant difference and that is why ensuring speed limits are applied appropriately and consistently remains such an important part of our broader road strategy. While I am speaking about speed limits, as the Minister of State will be aware, our local authorities have been tasked with examining local roads and implementing 30 km per hour speed limits where appropriate. I would very much like the Minister of State to give an update to the House on its status in each of the local authorities and if he does not have up-to-date information on the status, for him to engage directly with local authorities as I am hearing that there are some difficulties with local authorities moving that process forward. We all want our roads to be safer. Speed is a huge driver in that and it is important we see that process concluded as soon as possible. I also welcome the provisions relating to dangerous and careless driving offences. At present the situation can arise that a jury does not consider the threshold for dangerous driving has been met, but cannot consider whether the evidence supports a conviction for careless driving. That means we get outcomes that do not accurately reflect the facts of a case. Allowing a jury to return a verdict of the lesser offence of careless driving, where appropriate, is a common-sense reform and I welcome it. It will help ensure that accountability better reflects the evidence presented while maintaining the rights and protections that are fundamental to our justice system. I also welcome the measures relating to mobile camera van operators. Requiring operators to attend court in very routine cases is not always the best use of limited resources. At the same time, efficiency must never come at the expense of fairness. Where a genuine dispute exists, defendants must continue to have the opportunity to challenge evidence and to seek the attendance of a witness. It is important that public confidence in road traffic enforcement is maintained alongside any efficiency gains. The national vehicle and driver file sits at the centre of many of the systems that people interact with every day, whether renewing a driver's licence, taxing a vehicle or complying with road traffic regulations. Maintaining the accuracy, effectiveness and legal robustness of that system is essential. I welcome the decision to remove the requirement for a paper motor tax disc. It is a sensible modernisation of a system that has changed very little despite the widespread digitalisation of our public services. Most motorists now expect to access information and complete transactions online. I welcome that our legislation will reflect that. The key requirement is now that the electronic systems underpinning all of this are reliable, accurate and easy to access. Gardaí, local authorities and members of the public must be able to verify a vehicle's status quickly and with confidence. We must also ensure that people who are less comfortable using digital services are not left behind as these changes are implemented. I very much welcome the statutory basis being provided for the Check My Vehicle service. This service gives members of the public access to important information and helps support transparency, compliance and consumer confidence. Modernisation of systems does not always attract headlines but it can save people time, improve their experience of interacting with the State and reduce the State's administrative costs. As services continue to expand and evolve, privacy considerations must remain to the fore. Public confidence in the State's digital services depends on people knowing their information is protected and that sensitive personal details cannot be disclosed. Communities across the country want to see tangible improvements in road safety. They want safer junctions, safer routes to schools, safer town centres and faster action where risks are identified. The measures contained in the Bill may appear technical but their purpose is anything but. Better data sharing, more effective enforcement, appropriate speed limits and modernised public services all contribute to one common objective - preventing collisions and saving lives. I share my colleagues' concerns in relation to enforcement. That is also a huge piece, as is training and education, where there is scope for improvement. Ultimately, the steps we take with this legislation and with regard to enforcement and awareness and education campaigns will all be measured by one statistic. Is the number of road deaths and pedestrian injuries caused by vehicles falling? I very much hope this legislation passes swiftly through the House and that the various sections are commenced as quickly as possible.

As we deal with a largely technical Bill related to various areas of Road Traffic Acts, websites, databases and day-to-day administration relating to driving, I want to touch on something else that is viewed by many as a glaring omission in the delivery of policy and that I would say is an error in policy. For many years, members of the diaspora have been pointing out the administrative burden associated with returning home to Ireland. Given that we are crying out for healthcare professionals and that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is actually advertising in Australia to lure Irish people, including construction workers, home, one could be forgiven for thinking that this could be a moment and an opportunity to be seized to actually progress long-standing recommendations to address the challenges faced by returning Irish immigrants. Unfortunately, for this Government, that does not seem to be the case. The pace of progress in obtaining reciprocal agreements for the recognition and exchange of driving licences between Ireland and other countries and US states has been far too slow. I commend those who have long campaigned on this and on other diaspora issues, especially Safe Home Ireland and the Irish-US Driver's License Exchange campaign group, the latter of which last year published a report on this very matter. It brought forward proposals to allow for the simplification of the process. These warrant serious consideration. That is why there has been so much frustration at what is reported in the diaspora media as a slap in the face over the last few days. The crux of the issue lies in respect and prioritisation. On respect, to use the words of one campaigner, "No reason is given, no explanation made to those affected and their families, who have and continue to be impacted emotionally and financially by an unintended consequence of what we believe is just poorly worded legislation." On prioritisation, we see what the Government is capable of when it prioritises a matter. When it prioritised this matter, the programme for Government committed to working on reciprocal arrangements with countries with large diaspora populations. It committed to prioritising such arrangements as would benefit the commercial sector. I welcome the progress made with regard to the commercial sector early this year but my simple ask of the Government is to ascribe equal priority to Irish citizens who wish to return home to Ireland. This is clear-cut. Deputy Canney can either be a Minister of State for whom the diaspora are simply a photo opportunity or a handshake on his St. Patrick's Day jollies or he can be a real friend to our brothers, sisters, sons and daughters who live abroad and who want to come home. He can be a Minister of State who does all he can within his power to help alleviate the administrative burden of returning home if that is their wish. I ask him to commit to making this a priority for his Department and to getting it done.

The Labour Party absolutely supports the main thrust of this Bill, which is to improve data sharing between the State bodies responsible for road safety, that is, An Garda Síochána, the RSA and our local authorities. At present, the information exists but the people who need that information to make our roads safer do not necessarily have access to it. That situation has been allowed to persist for too long. Nevertheless, I welcome the Bill being introduced at Second Stage today. If a person is seriously injured on a road, if there is a collision at a dangerous junction, if gardaí repeatedly attend the same stretch of road or if local residents have been reporting a danger for years, that information should not disappear into the database of one public body and become inaccessible to another. It should be shared across the competent and relevant authorities to inform what happens next. The purpose of road safety data is not just to produce statistics; it is to prevent the next collision from happening. My Labour Party colleagues and I are very supportive of the provisions in this Bill that allow road authorities to request and process collision data to identify and assess safety risks to plan for road maintenance, junction redesign and so on and know where the resources need to be targeted. The Bill specifically provides that An Garda Síochána or another public authority may disclose collision data to a road authority or nominated local authority for those purposes. It also provides safeguards around the processing of personal data. That is all very welcome but we have to ask why it has taken this long. We have known for years that there is a problem with the fragmentation of road safety data. Road safety campaigners have been banging this drum for a long time. In a previous debate on road safety in this House, I spoke about the frustration of public representatives who know the dangerous locations in their communities but who cannot always access the data necessary to understand the full picture. I know of several in my constituency and I am sure my constituency colleagues would point the Minister of State to the exact same spots. The issue is pretty straightforward. A local authority cannot properly redesign a dangerous road if it does not have information about what is actually happening on that road. It cannot always accurately identify black spots or junctions that are particularly dangerous for vulnerable road users like pedestrians or cyclists. It basically cannot identify patterns because the information is sitting in a different organisation. That is why this part of the Bill is really important. We should be moving toward a system where collision information is routinely used to identify locations of interest, where local authorities are able to intervene quickly and where the State has national oversight of dangerous locations. Fatalities are the most visible part of the road safety crisis but we also need to look at serious injuries that are happening on our roads. My colleague and the Labour Party's health spokesperson, Deputy Marie Sherlock, has done some important work in this area. There is a gap between Garda collision statistics and hospital data. Thousands of people are hospitalised following road collisions whose injuries are not necessarily reflected in the same way in the national collision statistics. What this means is that, once again, we risk making decisions based on an incomplete picture. This also needs to be addressed. If a person is seriously injured because of the way our road system is designed, that information should be available to help us make the system safer. In May, the RSA published an interactive map of road traffic injury collisions covering fatal, serious and minor injury collisions between 2016 and 2024. This is a really useful step towards transparency and evidence-based decision making. However, that information has to lead to action. We need local authorities to have the power, the resources and the obligation to act when the evidence tells us that a road is dangerous. That brings me to the wider context of this Bill. Road traffic legislation is not merely an administrative exercise. Ireland is in the middle of a road safety crisis and I do not think any of us are being hyperbolic when we say that. The RSA figures tell us that very clearly. There has been enormous progress over the longer term; we should acknowledge that. Ireland has gone from hundreds of road deaths a year to figures that, for a period, were among the best in Europe. That progress is not something we should take for granted, but I fear that the eye has been taken off the ball. The RSA's long-term figures show a rise in road deaths from 134 in 2018 to 185 in 2025. The Garda figures report 190 deaths in 2025 as they include deaths in public places such as car parks and private roads. The Bill does not address this but we also need to clarify which are the more accurate figures when it comes to deaths as a result of cars. I would argue that the Garda figures are more complete in that regard but that is a discussion for another day. Tragically, regardless of whose figures we use - those of the Garda or the RSA - the trend of increasing fatalities shows no signs of reversing this year. At the end of July, 105 people had already lost their lives on Irish roads, or 13 more than at the same point in 2025. More than 40% of fatalities occurred on Saturdays and Sundays. The RSA reports that 57% of fatalities occurred on roads with speed limits of 80 km/h or higher, while 27% of those killed were aged between 16 and 25. Every one of these road fatalities and every life lost will have left devastation in its wake for the thousands of people grieving the loss of their loved one. We have all seen the consequences in our communities. In February, a man in his 80s, Frank Daly, was killed when a Bus Éireann double-decker bus struck pedestrians not far from here on North Earl Street. Three other people were taken to hospital. In June, a man in his 30s died following a three-car collision on the M21 between Abbeyfeale and Newcastle West. His death brought the number of people killed on Irish roads at that point in the year to 75, six higher than in the previous year. In July, three men were killed in separate collisions in Donegal, Cork and Kildare in the space of a single day. In August, we witnessed an absolutely devastating collision on the M9 in Kildare, where five teenagers lost their lives in a head-on collision after a car travelled on the wrong side of the motorway. Four other people, a family including a child who were on their way to Dublin Airport to go on holiday, were seriously injured. I am so glad to have seen an update from the three sisters yesterday to say they are getting stronger each day, and I wish them the very best as they continue their recovery. These sorts of devastating events stay with communities. They stay with the emergency workers who respond to them - the gardaí and anyone who happens to witness them - and above all, they stay with the families who are impacted by them. The barometer against which we have to measure every piece of road traffic legislation, such as this one, is whether it will make our roads safer. On the data-sharing element of this, I am confident this Bill will do that. On the speed limits element, though, which comes under Part 5 of the Bill, I cannot say I am quite as convinced. In fact, I find this part of the Bill a little concerning. Section 21 provides for local authorities to be able to continue to set a special speed limit of 60 km/h for local roads in built-up areas. The Minister will be aware there is a long-standing campaign, with many different advocacy groups calling for a default urban speed limit of 30 km/h. I support this campaign. At the very least, the sensible approach would be to standardise urban road speed limits. At present, a road speed limit could be 60 km/h but if you were to transplant that exact same road into a different area, it would be 50 km/h. It creates ambiguity, and when it comes to road safety and the rules of the road, ambiguity poses a genuine danger. It also sends the wrong message about allowing higher speeds in built-up areas. Drivers could legitimately ask why it is okay for one road to have a speed limit of 60 km/h but another road to have one of 50 km/h in very similar areas. They may be tempted to put the foot down a little bit more as a result, seeing a sort of unfairness there. My clear position is that we should be reducing urban speed limits to 30 km/h. It is increasingly becoming the international norm. It is also the policy direction that this State has already legislated for. The Road Traffic Act 2024 provided for a default 30 km/h speed limit in built-up areas. The ink was hardly dry on that Act, though, before the Government started to roll back on it. I have tabled a number of parliamentary questions to try to ascertain why the Government was effectively moving away from the national default approach and instead instructing local authorities to introduce 30 km/h speed limits through special speed limit zones. I have never really received a satisfactory response. Generally, all I get is that it is too difficult. Once again, that is not good enough. The question should not be about whether moving from 50 km/h to 30 km/h speed limits in built-up areas is difficult or not. It should be about whether it would save lives and prevent serious injuries. The relationship between speed and the severity of pedestrian collisions is well established. Around 5% of pedestrians would be killed at an impact speed of 30 km/h, compared with approximately 50% at 60 km/h and 90% at 80 km/h. There is an extraordinary difference there. At 30 km/h, we give someone a fighting chance. At higher speeds, the consequences of a mistake become drastically, dramatically more severe. Speed limits are not about how we get drivers from A to B most efficiently. They are about what happens when something goes wrong, like a child running out onto a road, a cyclist falling off their bike in the middle of traffic or a driver getting distracted for a second or two. We cannot build a road system around the assumption that everyone will behave perfectly all the time. Our road system should be designed so that those mistakes do not automatically become fatal or risk life-changing injuries for those involved. The case for reducing urban speed limits to 30 km/h is clear, based on the evidence from places where this has been done. Wales, for example, introduced a default 20 miles per hour speed limit on restricted roads in built-up areas in September 2023. Early evidence showed average speeds falling by around 4 miles per hour on a sample of main roads. In 2024, casualties on roads in Wales with 20 miles per hour and 30 miles per hour limits combined were almost 20% lower than in the year before. It is a relatively short period of data but the direction of travel is encouraging. It is certainly a lot better than the direction we have been heading in for some time now here. The Welsh Government has also estimated that the introduction of 20 miles per hour limits could prevent deaths and serious injuries while delivering wider economic and public health benefits. We can also look to Spain. They introduced a nationwide urban 30 km/h limit on streets with a single lane in each direction in 2021. Urban road deaths fell by 20% in 2021 compared with 2019. Their directorate general for traffic specifically linked the reduction to a package of urban road safety measures, including the 30 km/h limit. Pedestrian deaths fell by 26%, cyclist deaths by 34% and deaths among people over 64 by 31%. Five years on, Spain continues to see a positive trend, with urban fatalities in 2024 5% below 2019 levels, while cyclist fatalities in cities were almost 19% lower and pedestrian fatalities more than 16% lower. The case for reducing urban speed limits as a default is not theoretical. This is what happens when governments decide that speed in urban areas should be designed around the safety of humans rather than the convenience of the fastest possible journey. I pay particular tribute to the Love 30 campaign group, which has been to the fore in calling for 30 km/h to be the default speed limit in built-up areas in Ireland, particularly in town centres, residential areas and around schools and places of public assembly. I had the pleasure of hosting Love 30 here in Leinster House for an audiovisual room briefing on the campaign, alongside other organisations including the Dublin Commuter Coalition, Irish Doctors for the Environment, Cycling Ireland, An Taisce, the Irish Road Victims Association and community groups from around the country, all of which support the default urban speed limit of 30 km/h. Whether it is pedestrians, cyclists, children on their way to school, older people going to do their shopping, people with disabilities navigating pavements and crossings, commuters waiting for a bus or teenagers hanging out with friends, we have to design our roads and institute a road safety system for all of these people. We also have to keep an eye on enforcement. That is the other side of this debate. A speed limit that is not enforced is just a number on a sign. There was a 23% increase in motorists caught speeding last year. I do not know if we have got better in terms of enforcement or if just more people are speeding; I suspect the latter. We need to take a holistic approach to enforcement. The obvious place to look is the decline in the number of gardaí involved in roads policing and our failure to address that despite several promises over the years. We have the authorities, the strategies, the targets, the awareness campaigns and announcements but the gardaí tasked with enforcing the law on our roads are being asked to do more and more with too few resources. In May 2024, we were promised an additional 150 gardaí specifically for roads policing by 2025. We got 15. If we go back further, the picture is even worse. There are almost 400 fewer gardaí working in roads policing today than in 2009, while there are more than half a million more cars on Irish roads. I do not believe the roads policing position will get any better this year given the increased demands on our gardaí due to the hosting of the EU Presidency and the circus around Donald Trump at the Irish Open last week. Enforcement has become so much more difficult as a result and the odds of being caught for those who break the rules of the road are increasingly in their favour. Driver behaviour naturally adapts to this new reality. We have also been incredibly slow at rolling out stationary speed cameras and traffic light cameras. I was very pleased to see Deputy Shane Moynihan raising this with the Taoiseach yesterday; maybe he listened to him. It beggars belief that we still only have nine fixed speed camera sites in the country. Road design should also form part of the overall enforcement strategy from a proactive preventative perspective. I hope that the data-sharing element of this Bill will have a positive impact in that regard. We need to redesign the dangerous locations identified through collision data and crucially we need to give local authorities the resources to do so. The Government's own road safety strategy has a target of reducing road deaths and serious injuries by 50% by 2030. The baseline for that was 144 deaths per year and a target of 72 or fewer and yet we recorded 185 deaths on public roads last year. We cannot look at these figures and conclude that the current approach is working; much more needs to be done. I want to briefly touch on the RSA given its role as a competent authority when it comes to road safety. The Minister of State will know that I have my concerns about the apparent rollback in the Government's commitment to reform the RSA and split it into two separate bodies as recommended in the 2024 Indecon report. As I have said on many occasions, there is an inherent conflict at the heart of the RSA in that it is both poacher and gamekeeper when it comes to vehicles on our roads. On the one hand it is tasked with making our roads safer and sometimes that can mean fewer cars on the road but on the other it is incentivised to keep adding more and more cars onto the road because it administers and is funded through driving tests and the NCT. Those functions need to be split. Let one body deal with driving tests and another deal exclusively with road safety. I support the concept of an independent commission for safety with real powers to intervene and to take politics out of our decisions on road safety. Whatever model it takes we need a much more active authority in the road safety space. South Dublin County Council recently ran a consultation on proposals to install large digital advertising boards in various locations around the county. It was really welcome to see the RSA make a submission detailing the potential hazards that these huge electronic billboards would cause in terms of driver distraction. At the same South Dublin County Council and local authorities all over the country have been carrying out a speed limit review but the RSA has not given any comment to my knowledge on any of those speed limit reviews. That is exactly an area where the RSA should be using its expertise and experience, and advocating for what it thinks is the safest thing for our roads. We need a much more active authority, an authority that will work with local authorities, engage in public consultations and share its expertise. The vast majority of the Bill represents a positive step. I have spoken about the data-sharing piece but the provision around multi-offence incidents which were introduced in the Road Traffic Act 2024 is also a move in the right direction, as is the provision concerning careless driving which as the explanatory note to the Bill states arose from the report on the tragic death of Shane O'Farrell. However, the Bill could have gone further particularly with respect to the speed limit issue. I want to see the evidence lead us in the right decision on this. We should not use 60 km/h as a convenient compromise simply because it is already familiar. If a road is genuinely a major arterial route, we can assess it on its merits but in built-up areas the starting point should be 30 km/h. That is what the evidence tells us will prevent collisions and fatalities. If an exceptional road needs to be treated differently, there should be a process for that exception. That is a much better system than beginning with a higher speed and asking communities to fight their way down to something safer. The principle should be the opposite: start with safety then justify any departure from that. We cannot legislate our way out of every collision but we can design a system that makes collisions less likely and makes the inevitable human mistake less likely to result in death or serious injury. I welcome the Bill insofar as it finally recognises that road safety depends on information being shared between the organisations responsible for our roads. Local authorities, the Garda and the RSA all need to be on the same page and working from the same evidence in terms of black spots and what needs attention. I sincerely hope that will have a positive effect. I urge the Minister of State to reconsider the approach on the speed limits. We should start with a default 30 km/h limit for built-up areas. We know that lower speed limits save lives and prevent life-changing injuries. The case has already been made by Wales and Spain, and the Road Traffic Act has already pointed us in that direction. I urge the Minister of State not to roll back any further on what was legislated for in that Act.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. Road safety is incredibly important and too many of the important indicators are going in the wrong direction. In Meath, for example, people are telling me the same thing again and again, and I know it myself: you never see a roads policing unit. Motorists can go for months or more likely years without encountering a Garda checkpoint or traffic control. That absence has consequences. When there is no fear of getting caught, dangerous driving becomes normalised. Behaviours such as speeding, mobile phone use, dangerous overtaking, and drink and drug driving thrive in the vacuum left by declining enforcement. The road safety experts are clear, as I heard when I was a member of the transport committee. Visible enforcement is one of the most effective deterrents we have and the Government has failed to resource it. There is also the state of our roads. Across Meath, motorists are navigating broken and deteriorating surfaces, dangerous junctions, inadequate signage and long-standing black spots. Rural communities in particular carry a disproportionate burden of serious and fatal collisions yet they are expected to live with roads that are themselves a hazard. The road maintenance backlog is growing. Local authority funding is stretched beyond breaking point and this Bill does not address any of it. There is not one measure to fix a dangerous junction and not one euro for road repairs. Where is the alternative? For too many people in Meath there simply is not one. We have a complete lack of appropriate, sufficient and working public transport. Towns, including very large towns and villages, are left without reliable bus or rail connections, forcing people into cars often on roads that are neither safe nor fit for purpose. We cannot talk to people about road safety while offering them no viable way to leave the car at home. While I welcome a number of the sensible and long-awaited provisions of this Bill, we have to look at the issue of enforcement. We need more roads police and roads policing. We need greater funding for roads maintenance and repair. Systems, of course, should talk to each other, and that is welcome. Of course, personal responsibility is hugely important in all of this. Some of the issues I have mentioned do not fall under the Minister of State's remit but I would ask him to work with his ministerial colleagues, particularly in the Department of justice, on these areas. Another area that falls under the Minister of State's remit needs direct attention. As my party's spokesperson on education, I want to talk about the need for a standard and proactive approach to traffic calming at schools. When I was my party's spokesperson on transport, the safe routes to school programme was introduced. While it is excellent and very welcome, it is too slow and it is underfunded. Different schools have different approaches. Too many schools are left without important, and I would say essential, traffic-calming and child-protecting infrastructure. Dealing with local authorities is infuriating. There appear to be huge discretion and flexibility but there is no rhyme or reason when going from school to school. One school has huge intervention, while another school in a similar or even worse setting has nothing at all. The local authority, in my experience, defends that position and contradiction. It makes no sense to me. We need guidelines and design handbooks for traffic calming at schools and we need a comprehensive plan for every single school. This, along with some of the measures the Minister of State is proposing here, will help.

I will say at the outset that it is good we finally have this Bill before the House. We have been waiting for it for a while now. A number of its provisions represent real common-sense reforms. They look at the modernisation of the national vehicle and driver file, the removal of outdated paper motor tax discs, improvements to collision data sharing, which I will speak more about, and measures designed to strengthen road safety enforcement and planning. These are all positive, but we have to understand this Bill is coming forward in the context of wider road safety issues and the real carnage that is taking place on our roads at the moment. There were 190 people killed on our roads last year and, according to An Garda Síochána, 134 already killed in 2026. Many of these deaths are preventable but all destroy families. Everything we do in this Bill and everything we do in the Oireachtas transport committee has to be with a view to getting us closer to the objective of Vision Zero, which is eliminating deaths and serious injuries on our roads. The Green Party and I have continually highlighted the need for stronger and more focused road safety responses, including better enforcement, safer road design and improved collision analysis. I might come back to enforcement at the end. One of the strongest elements in the Bill the Minister of State has brought forward today is the provision allowing local authorities to access and process collision data for road safety purposes. For too long, local authorities have been restricted in their ability to analyse collision patterns and particularly to identify dangerous locations in their road network. The ability to access this information will enable evidence-based interventions, better targeting of safety investments and earlier identification of high-risk locations. At the moment, when the RSA and An Garda Síochána go through their analysis of collisions in an area, let us say in my home area, they might say there is a bad bend or junction in Blanchardstown and there have been six crashes there over the past three years, but because of GDPR right now they cannot convey that information to the local authority, Fingal County Council. That is going to be resolved in this Bill and it is something I welcome. While the Bill creates the legal basis to share collision data, it does not require systematic collision analysis, a publication of findings or safety action plans arising from that data. As this Bill goes through, I hope the Minister of State will look at the data sharing being brought through, which is valuable, being supplemented with regular reporting on collision hot spots, publication of anonymised datasets, and the integration with the Vision Zero targets and commitments that identified high-risk locations receiving funding priority. There is no point in Fingal being able to say, "Yes, there is a really dangerous bend in Blanchardstown", if it does not have the money to actually do something about it. We have to have joined-up thinking here. We are solving one problem here but more has to flow from that. The Green Party has been a consistent supporter of more appropriate speed limits because we know, and we have heard this at the transport committee from experts who have come in, that speed remains one of the principal factors determining both collision risk and collision severity. This Bill allows local authorities and Transport Infrastructure Ireland to set 60 km/h limits on certain roads in built-up areas and provides additional flexibility regarding national roads. There is a potential risk that the legislation as it is currently drafted could be interpreted as creating opportunities for higher speeds in urbanised areas at a time when national policy is and should be moving us towards lower speeds and a safe systems approach. Will the Minister of State give an assurance that these amendments will not undermine the intent of the 30 km built-up area policy and the wider speed review? If that assurance cannot be given, I will struggle to support this Bill, notwithstanding the other positive elements I see within it. The abolition of the paper motor tax disc is overdue and is something I welcome. As we know, the Garda is now relying on automatic number plate recognition systems and access to digital databases. The paper disc requirement does not serve any meaningful enforcement purpose any more and removing unnecessary bureaucracy while retaining enforcement capacity is good public administration. The expansion of the level of information available through the check my vehicle service for consumer protection is a positive step. Providing greater information on things like tax status, roadworthiness certification and vehicle characteristics will assist buyers in the second-hand market and may help combat vehicle fraud and cloning. However, I should emphasise the data protection safeguards must remain robust and GDPR compliance must be fully maintained as the database functions expand. Beyond the items currently in the Bill, I argue that the Government should move more quickly on additional road safety measures. I will highlight a few of these. The implementation of the national safety camera strategy took a long time to be published. It is now published but when we asked the NTA and others about it at the transport committee, there was a real lack of clarity on when we were going to see outputs. I think only one meeting of the oversight body has taken place so far - maybe it is two at this stage - but how are we going to see this delivered? How are we going to see in our local authorities those red light cameras that would provide such benefit in catching motorists who are breaking red lights and are dangerous to cyclists, pedestrians and other motorists? Camera enforcement of mobile phone and seat belt offences, stronger road safety governance and the reform of the RSA have also been spoken about before. No doubt, we will come back to our difference of opinion on that again. It is also about improving regulation of dangerous vehicle use, including scramblers and high-powered e-scooters. The Bill to date contains a range of practical reforms that will modernise transport administration and strengthen aspects of road safety policy, but we should also recognise that legislation of this kind must form part of a wider commitment to Vision Zero. Every death and serious injury on our roads is preventable. I passionately believe these deaths are preventable. The objective has to be not just the removal of outdated, bureaucratic processes or the simplification and opening up of databases but actually saving lives. That is what we have to be about here. In this regard, there is so much more to do. The issue of enforcement is not directly within the Minister of State's remit but I am sure he has seen the discussion about the number of gardaí available for roads policing. This has been in the media in the past week. Commissioner Kelly came into the transport committee in the last sitting at the end of July and spoke about his position on roads policing. There are 660 gardaí assigned to roads policing right now. The Commissioner emphasised it is the largest stand-alone unit within An Garda Síochána but it is also significantly smaller than it was - 40% smaller than it was 15 years ago. We have a new Commissioner, whom I asked if growing the number of gardaí in roads policing was one of his objectives, to which he said it was not. In fairness to him, he made the point he believes there could be more efficiencies and more done among the 660. However, I want to put it on record that I do not believe that 660 gardaí on roads policing is enough, not when we had 190 people dead on our roads last year and 134 dead this year. In particular, there were two pieces of agreement that every organisation that came before the transport committee in the past six months on the topic of road safety outlined to us. The first was that the RSA was not fit for purpose, which we have spoken about before. The second was that enforcement was the key, but we are not seeing adequate enforcement. I understand in the Minister of State's role of overseeing road safety that he has regular engagement with his own senior Minister and the Minister for justice. I ask that he take the message of enforcement back. I welcome what the Commissioner said in terms of his approach to road safety on a general basis, but I do not believe we have enough gardaí focused on this crucial part of their role. I call on the Minister of State to be an advocate to the Department of justice to get more gardaí on our roads saving lives.

Cuirim fáilte roimh an mBille. Is Bille mór atá i gceist: tá a lán rudaí tábhachtacha ann. There is a lot in this. It is a timely update of many of the rules around driver and vehicle licensing. I might touch on a few points of the Bill. The first relates to the check my vehicle facility provided for in section 7 of Part 2. It is important to make that information available publicly. Somebody who works in my office bought a second-hand car recently and used the private vehicle checking websites, which cleared the vehicle. He subsequently found out there was a problem with the vehicle. If we make this information publicly available, as is provided for in the Bill, we avoid the possibility of private rogue traders essentially circumventing the information that consumers think they are getting about a car they are buying, and avoid the situation where they buy something and do not realise there may be a history that makes it questionable. Things like that are steps forward and progress that is necessary. Regarding the paper disc, the Roads Act 1920 established the requirement to have a tax disc on the car. That is a long time ago. It is over 100 years since 1920 when that was put in place. The reality is that we must be ready to move beyond paper discs on windscreens to establish whether car tax has been paid or not. My understanding, and I am open to contradiction in this regard, is that gardaí already have the power to check whether car tax is paid up to date or not. The slightly ridiculous thing is section 69 of the Road Traffic Act which provides for the requirement to display the disc and makes it an offence not to display the disc. It is preposterous that somebody could in theory be prosecuted for failing to display a disc when the car might be taxed already. Let us move with the times and move to a stage where gardaí can check through their automatic number plate recognition systems, which they are already using in relation to insurance and other things, and having that include road tax. I welcome the notion that we do not have to go through the sequence of events of putting the tax disc on the window. There are times when vehicle discs get damaged, or maybe a window leaks, and getting replacements for them is an additional charge on consumers. I welcome those provisions regarding road traffic discs in Part 3 equally. As I said, this is a large Bill. Part 5 deals with special speed limits. I would like to sound a note of caution in this regard. We have on the M50 this rolling speed limit, which changes according to the weather conditions, the volume of traffic and so on. The standard speed limit on the M50 around Dublin is 100 km/h. It may increase when you get to the south or onto the M1. That 100 km/h speed limit is variable, with signs sometimes telling people that it is 80 km/h or 60 km/h. In theory that sounds like a good idea. If it is a particularly cold day when there might be black ice or frost, or a particularly wet day or there could be substantial traffic, I see the rationale behind it but I will say two things. Having a variable speed limit like that which changes all the time creates a difficulty for motorists. They might be on a road they use all the time and they might be familiar with the speed limit, but now they have to keep an eye out for what it is. It can change from one part of the M50 to another, which makes it difficult for motorists. Beyond that, there is a broader point. Motorists need to take responsibility for assessing themselves what the appropriate speed to travel at is. Of course we should have speed limits, but we are allowing motorists to abdicate responsibility for making the judgment themselves that 80 km/h or 100 km/h on a particular day or in particular circumstances might be too fast. I do not think we need to do that. We are much better off to trust people. My experience with driving on the M50 is that very often the speed limit bears no relation whatsoever to the weather or traffic conditions. You will often find yourself on the M50 with an 80 km/h speed limit on a dry, bright day when the traffic is relatively light. From everything I can see, there is no need for it. I sound a note of caution about the special speed limits. On the broader issue regarding road tax, I said I welcome the provisions relating to the removal of the requirement for the paper disc. It is budget season. I do not whether we will have a chance to do it this year or not, but we should look at the manner in which we tax cars generally because the system, again, has not changed for a long time. We put in place incentives for electric vehicles. That is as may be. It is appropriate to incentivise that. As we move more towards the more cost-effective electric vehicles, and while we move towards the target of having more and more of them in the road, which have benefits in a whole range of different areas, is it the case that we are going to create a taxation deficit relating to road tax? If every car on the road, for example, benefits from a preferential tax rate, how will we ring-fence money for the upkeep and maintenance of roads and the safety systems that go with roads? The time has possibly come, even outside the context of a budget, for a review of how road tax is calculated and what the appropriate amounts are to be. In the context of the vehicle and driver file, it would be remiss not to mention the issue around driver testing waiting lists. This is an issue we have talked about in and outside this House. There remains an unacceptably long waiting period for people who want to have a driving test. Young people going to college or getting a new job that might require them to drive now have to wait an unacceptably long time to get their driving test to make them a legitimate and fully qualified driver, which means that progress is delayed, particularly for young people, and there is a situation where more and more people on the roads are unqualified or not fully qualified to drive. They cannot use motorways, for example, and there are other restrictions that apply to them. In my constituency, Dún Laoghaire, we have the second-longest waiting list for driving tests. We waited a long time for the Sandyford driving testing centre, which we were told was going to be a pressure valve on those waiting lists. We now understand that is not going to proceed because of some kind of administrative difficulty I do not need to go into. Now the people of Dún Laoghaire are still faced with long waiting lists. Despite the Department having applied more testers to that centre, there has not been a commensurate decrease in the number of people waiting or a commensurate increase in the number of tests that are happening on a weekly basis. It is not okay for this to continue the way it is. We need to deal with this as a matter of urgency. We owe it to young people in particular, and anybody who wants to get a driver test, whether it is a person who has come here to work and needs to qualify to drive in this jurisdiction or whoever it is. They should not have to wait months and years for driving tests. That is unacceptable. It needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. I would be grateful if the Minister of State were in a position to address what pressure valve there might be for Dún Laoghaire in the absence of the Sandyford centre coming online. What are the Department's answers to dealing with the waiting list for driving tests? The Minister of State is well aware that yesterday, Deputy Emer Currie and I introduced a Private Members' Bill, the road traffic (amendment) (Jax’s law) Bill 2026. Jax's law is a Bill that seeks to amend sections 52 and 53 of the Road Traffic Act 1961, which are the provisions for careless and dangerous driving. At the moment, careless and dangerous driving are dealt with as minor road traffic matters in the District Court on a summary basis. They therefore have a limited set of penalties available to the court unless death or serious injury is caused as a result of that careless or dangerous driving, in which case the Director of Public Prosecutions has the option to move that up in the rank of offences and prosecute it on indictment in the Circuit Court, which hugely expands the number of penalties and the range of tariffs available to court to penalise somebody for the consequences of that careless or dangerous driving. One of the things that is not recognised by the Road Traffic Act, however, is a serious harm that could be caused to somebody by the loss of a pregnancy. For example, Saoirse Aylward came to me and Deputy Currie earlier this year. She had been involved in a road traffic accident in 2024 as a result of which her baby, whose heartbeat she had heard and who was to be named Jax, died essentially in her womb. She was seriously injured and the person who was carelessly driving in that instance was prosecuted in the Circuit Court. She suggested to us that if she had not been seriously injured but was involved in a road traffic accident, the impact of which resulted in her losing the pregnancy, there would have been no recognition by the courts whatsoever. One thing that Jax's law seeks to do is to change that, so that the loss of a pregnancy is recognised by the law as a serious injury or as an injury significant enough to escalate the offence from the District Court to the Circuit Court. I equally recognise the work that has been done by Colleen Langan, whose aunt, Róisín Connolly, née Langan, was killed in a car accident in Monaghan in 2010. I think she was 26 weeks pregnant; I may have that wrong. Her husband was driving. They were hit by another driver. She died as a result of that. Her unborn child died as well. From the time of her accident in 2010 to the time of Saoirse Aylward's accident in 2024, nothing was done in this space. We know that there is a lacuna in the law there that needs to be repaired. The Bill that we have brought forward will do that. It does not change anything magnificent in the law but it just creates a recognition of the fact that a person involved in a road traffic accident, whose pregnancy ends as a result of that accident, has suffered a serious injury. It deserves recognition in the context of how that offence is dealt with subsequently in the court. Colleen was here yesterday. Saoirse and Nathan Murphy, Jax's parents, were here as well. They are hugely invested in this. Also in the Bill is the idea that the Road Safety Authority would begin to collect statistics in relation to pregnancies lost as a result of road traffic accidents. At the moment, inexplicably, they are not recorded. There is not necessarily a recording of the event when a person loses a pregnancy after a traffic accident. That is a statistic we should have access to. Although they do not enjoy personhood in the constitutional sense, it does reflect a seriousness in that accident that might not otherwise be recorded. The Bill also requires a provision that the Road Safety Authority would collect statistics in relation to lost pregnancies as a result of road traffic accidents. Why am I raising this? This is a gold opportunity to short-circuit the notion of our taking that Bill through in Private Members' time. As a Government Member, I do not have the same access to Private Members' time that many TDs in this Chamber do. We might ask it to be put into the lottery on a Thursday. The chances of it being reached for Second Stage, Committee Stage and Report Stage are very small. A way we can circumvent that is for the Minister of State to use this Bill as a vehicle to put Jax's law on the Statute Book, to lift the provisions, as we have drafted in that Bill, and drop them into this section. I will be presenting amendments on Committee Stage to do that. I note the Minister of State's supportive nature in relation to the issues we have raised. I know he has spoken to the people involved, Saoirse and Colleen. I appreciate his engagement on the issue. The best way to engage with it and to deliver for those people is to allow this Bill to be the vehicle to make Jax's law real law.

It is fair to say that we all welcome any moves in relation to anything that streamlines or simplifies, particularly when we talk about road traffic, whether it is from a point of view of retention of information and sharing information in relation to collisions or anything that can lead to something that is safer. We have all seen the absolute slaughter on our roads in recent times. Unfortunately, we have had too many tragic circumstances that are in the public domain that we all unfortunately have to comment on. That does not compare to the families who have been impacted, beyond detrimentally, in many ways, never to be put completely back together again. Coming from Dundalk, it is no different from anywhere else. Everybody has seen the increase in relation to the traffic. We have seen all the issues, particularly anybody who has had to use the M1, M50 or anything in recent times. Even the port tunnel cannot be used at times on the basis of the huge volume of traffic and the fact that this leads to, what are, in most cases, minor collisions. They are minor collisions that have an impact in relation to the problem across the board. Yet we have all the issues in relation to speeding. We have the far worse issue in relation to drug and drink driving. Everybody can improve on the next issue, myself included, in terms of ensuring people are careful. People spend far too long playing with their phones, at times in this Chamber and everywhere else in life, but it can be far more detrimental when people are paying far too much attention to phones in cars where they can impact on themselves and many others on the road. That is something that we have to look at. I will follow up on what Deputy O'Rourke said. In fairness, I do not know how many of us have been knocking on doors and talking to many communities, particularly those involved with schools. We have not always seen a consistency in relation to traffic calming. I could probably name multiple places. I think of the likes of Sheelagh in north Louth. I can also think of one that is, hopefully, happening this year beside Pearse Park in Dundalk. We need to make sure more of these are happening in a quicker way and that we ensure absolute safety. It makes sense that we would streamline the process, that it would happen faster and that we would see a template of best practice operated everywhere it possibly can. We know the issues. I refer to e-scooters. An eight-year-old in Dundalk was stopped on one. There was also the tragic case of Grace Lynch and injuries to many others, both locally and across the State. There is an issue in relation to scramblers. We need to make sure that we have fit-for-purpose legislation and whatever requirements are needed. We know the issue that An Garda Síochána talks about in relation to training. I know it is not always suitable in relation to following and chasing in dangerous circumstances. We have also had the issue of those acting illegally and travelling the wrong way on motorways. A community worker has come to me and I would like to speak to the Minister of State about it afterwards. This would have happened in my own locality. Between hard policing combined with youth workers who would have engaged directly with young people brought some of this happening to a stop. It is something he believes can be delivered across the board. I would like to raise another issue. Paul Brady from Drive Virtual Driving Academy has highlighted the use of simulators. The Minister of State spoke about it himself. He had engaged with the RSA, many politicians and many Government representatives. A process was in play, as well as the possibility of using this. It seems to have stalled. He and I will be requesting some engagement from the Minister of State in relation to it. Those are two particular issues I will be bringing up with the Minister of State.

Before I start, I want to mention two young people who have been killed on the roads in Meath in the past few months. Mia Lily Keogh O'Keeffe was a wonderful young girl. In her short life, she brought enormous happiness and love to her friends and family. She was gifted, creative and engaging with all who knew her. Her life was stolen from her. She was struck while walking her dog on a pedestrian crossing in Navan in February. The driver fled the scene. TJ McDonnell, from Bohermeen, County Meath, was killed just a few weeks ago. TJ was training for a cycling event with a friend when he was hit by a van. Here too, the driver fled the scene. I will not say anything more about the circumstances of these accidents as the drivers are before the court but TJ was a young man. In his short life, he had done so much. He touched the lives of so many people for the better. In both cases, their families, friends and communities had been devastated. The Minister of State knows this but a parent burying a child is a very difficult thing. In both cases, those collisions should not have happened. Just two days ago, there was a fatal collision on the M4 at Enfield, where a man in his 30s was killed. Will the Minister of State consider a minimum sentence for those involved in hit and runs? Sometimes this can be done to evade drink or drugs being detected in the system. I believe the penalty should be increased so that there is no incentive to do that. Leaving a person dying on the side of a road without treatment is despicable and can also directly result in death. There have been 134 deaths so far this year on our roads and it is only September. In each of those cases, families are devastated. Road deaths are nearly a fifth higher at this point in 2026 than at the same period last year. Some experts are saying that we are on course to surpass the 2010 high of 212 road deaths. Statistics are saying that a disproportionate number of young male drivers are involved in road collisions, especially on rural roads. Young men in their 20s from Mayo and Donegal are disproportionately represented. This is important because it also shows that a difficulty with the quality of the roads in certain parts of the country is leading to these deaths. It gives me no pleasure to say that under this Government, road death figures are getting worse. We are an outlier in European terms because in most of Europe, road deaths are falling. The alarming trend whereby 27% of road deaths are among young people between the ages of 16 and 25 is shocking. It is important to remind people that road safety is first and foremost a personal responsibility. Each one of us is directly responsible for his or her behaviour on the roads and it is important that people take that responsibility in hand and drive in a safe and controlled manner. However, the truth is that roads are getting more dangerous and it is not by accident that this is happening. Many towns and villages have little or no traffic protections. I can think of a dozen towns and villages in my county where cars and trucks rattle through at speed on a daily basis. In some communities, those protections are only useful for those who are already obeying the rules of the road. This is important. We need road protections to protect people, especially pedestrians, from others who are not obeying the rules of the road, including people who are driving too fast or under the influence. Many towns and villages in Europe have traffic calming measures at the entrance of every single street or road entering that town or village. People are forced to slow down because of ramps or chicanes. That should be a default standard. Every town and village should have a default chicane or ramp at its entrance to forcibly slow down cars coming into it. Another important point is the absence of enforcement. When Mia Lily Keogh O’Keeffe was born there were 1,046 road traffic gardaí on our roads. When she was killed there were 638 road traffic gardaí on the roads. That action alone is the main reason people are being killed in higher numbers on the roads. All the Bills the Minister of State or anybody else brings through the House are not worth a hill beans if there is not the gardaí to enforce them. I remember in the noughties people would think twice about drinking and driving because there was a reasonable chance of a garda stopping them on the roads. That behaviour changed radically because people knew there was no reasonable chance of their being stopped. Without enforcement, people's behaviour changes for the worse. They break the rules of the road and people get killed. That 40% collapse in the number of gardaí is the most important issue. If it is not addressed, all the Government's Bills will be meaningless. That is a fact. I have been breathalysed twice in the last 30 years. On both occasions, it occurred at 10.30 a.m. on a Monday. I know there are some people who will be at weddings and late night events on a Sunday night, etc., but a very small cohort is still over the limit at 10.30 a.m. compared with people travelling home late at night on a Friday or Saturday. It is easier to staff road checks at 10.30 on a Monday than it is in the evening but it is less effective and less useful for saving lives. On enforcement, the figures are incredible. Even when gardaí catch people the courts system is failing us. There has been a sevenfold increase in speeding prosecutions in the nearest District Court to me, Trim, but two thirds of those did not proceed. That is incredible. I invite the Minister of State to guess how many people on the roads are not insured. There are 211,000 people driving on the roads today who are not insured or registered. When the Minister of State drives home to Galway today he is likely to pass around 200 drivers coming in the other direction who are not insured or registered. That is incredible. Then there is the situation whereby 20% of people put off the roads do not have a driving licence. In 2024, 8,200 individuals who were to receive penalty points did not even have a licence and 23,000 people who were disqualified never gave up their licence. We are talking about the wild west in terms of people ignoring the rules of the road and the laws. Unless we join the dots between enforcement, deterrence and behavioural change, we will never fix the end result, namely, deaths on our roads. We have light-touch enforcement in this country. I have a question which I ask the Minister of State to address in his response. He contacted the RSA in the week after the M9 collision to convey his unhappiness with the organisation due to its absence in the aftermath of that accident. A spokesperson for the RSA said it was not in a position to give any information to people about how to deal with people driving down the wrong side of the road. The Government's plan was to split the RSA but it has done a U-turn on that. Why is that the case? Another issue I have banged on about for years in this Chamber is that gardaí do not have the ability to pursue e-scooters, scramblers and people driving down the wrong side of the road. When I first raised this it was like playing handball against a haystack because no matter how many times I raised it, nothing happened on the Government side. After the M9 incident, the Government jumped into some level of action but, believe it or not, there will be just six gardaí trained in pursuit training by the end of this year. If gardaí are unable to pursue people who are breaking the law, we will not be able to enforce the law. If there is one thing I would like the Minister of State to take home today, it is enforcement. However, to be honest, I believe there will be fewer than 600 people policing our roads in five years' time, unfortunately.

As an Opposition TD who tries to be constructive, I broadly welcome the National Vehicle and Driver File, Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2026. Many elements of it are welcome and will bring driving regulations and monitoring somewhat into the 21st century. The decision to finally abolish the paper motor tax discs is an important measure. For decades we forced motorists to have this piece of paper on their windscreens while the rest of society moved ahead with digitalisation. As such, moving to a digital system, backed by an online verification portal, makes a lot of sense, just as it did in the UK perhaps 14 years ago. I will mention the separate but related issue of insurance discs in a while. The introduction of open-ended non-use declarations also makes sense, as it will get rid of an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy for thousands of vintage car enthusiasts, mechanics, people who fix cars and citizens who have their car off the road for whatever reason. Removing some of the bureaucracy is very welcome. I also welcome the legal framework to finally resume the sharing of traffic collision data between An Garda Síochána and local authorities. This is crucial but has been unfortunately delayed because councils cannot engineer safer roads if they do not have full information about where accidents are occurring. In this context, while the Bill is a welcome step, this Government and its predecessor have already failed the broader test of dealing with the deadly crisis unfolding on our roads. As we all know, we are in the middle of a devastating spike in road fatalities, which are up significantly on the number in 2025. Depending on which figures are used, road fatalities are up 17% on last year and are rising at a time when the European Union average is falling. That is shocking and concerning. The crisis has grown because it has not been dealt. If we take the delay in delivering this Bill as an example, the previous Government allowed strict GDPR limitations and interpretations to legally block councils from getting collision data since November 2023, even though the Data Protection Commission explicitly stated that GDPR should not prevent proportionate publication of crash location details, especially when the technology exists to get rid of personal identifiers by anonymising or limiting the data. The critics of this asked why the RSA could not just itself strip out names and addresses or pass on the co-ordinates to council engineers. I am wondering whether this was a resourcing issue above all or something else. It has meant that for three years local authorities have been effectively blindfolded. I acknowledge there are patch jobs that were put in, like the locations of interest, so they got some statistics, but one has to ask how many accident black spots went unfixed while this Bill was just dragging on or was not actually formulated in the first place. While this Bill brings in digital tracking and makes things a lot easier, it is, as other Deputies have said, very quiet on the enforcement of the law. It is great to have a database, but if we do not have enough traffic corps members on the roads to intercept dangerous drivers, it will not work. That is why, as I have said before, we need a separate dedicated traffic police whose members have specific powers in relation to the roads and who do not even have to be members of An Garda Síochána. That is a model that works in other countries. The databases that we will improve on will not breathalyse the drivers. I take on board what Deputy Tóibín said about being stopped and breathalysed at 10 o'clock in the morning. I was breathalysed by a garda at 8 o'clock in the morning. I said, "You are on the ball." He said that it was part of Drew's measures and that they had to do that before they clocked off. To me, it makes more sense to try to catch people when they are actually under the influence. We do not have new digital measures stopping and seizing unroadworthy vehicles when they are actually on the road. Yes, it can be traced back, but sometimes you have to stop the people when they are actually out there. You nab them on the spot. A bugbear of mine is the person who drives for a full kilometre in a bus lane. The R136 in my constituency is a case in point. I have a lot of sympathy for people who, if they are turning towards a left lane, get into the bus lane so as to avoid queuing. They are not blocking any buses and not blocking any traffic and are able to make a turn, but how long is a piece of string? I have seen people go along for the full kilometre and then bump in front of someone else. That practice irritates other drivers and is breaking the law but it is increasing. I have seen it anecdotally a lot more in the past two or three years than I had done in the previous ten. I have had reports from constituents of those idiots who break the pedestrian lights in heavy traffic, not just when they are going at speed but also when they are going to work during school times, when the traffic is busy. They go through the lights and sometimes push past the school traffic wardens as well. We need that physical element of policing. We also have to look at the gaps that the legislation fails to fill. I again refer to Jax's law, which I was happy to co-sign recently. I will not repeat everything Deputy Barry Ward, who is proposing it along with Deputy Currie, said earlier, but this legislation highlights one of the important gaps in our core road traffic framework, that is, that the law still fails to legally recognise the loss of an unborn child caused by dangerous driving. If the Government is fully committed to comprehensive reform, mechanisms to address gaps like Jax's law could be integrated into this legislation, as Deputy Ward said. The Department should do it rather than waiting for Deputy Ward to put the amendment in himself. That would be better than having grieving families campaigning on the margins, hoping that the Bill gets to Second Stage and other Stages through other means. If Jax's law could be added into the wording, I would certainly support amendments to that effect. Earlier today, I mentioned the lack of joined-up thinking in transport and planning as regards buses, trains, parking spaces and EV charging facilities in new developments. People are told they cannot have parking spaces because they have this fantastic public transport service, so they have to drive but they have nowhere to park. People get frustrated because of this. They get agitated. They have been fighting with their neighbour to try to get a parking space. Now they are rushing out to get to a place that you need to take three buses, which do not always turn up, to get to. We have to understand what is required in new developments. If we are going forward, all speeds in new developments should be 10 km/h - as simple as that - not the 30 km/h and 10 km/h and then a crawl out of it allowing people to move at normal speed, but allowing people to actually park their cars so their relatives can visit or they can get to work. At the moment we are just creating extra aggression on the roads, and that is the last thing we need in terms of people responding because if someone does something untoward on the road and you are already agitated, you will get madder and respond in a way that you would not normally do. We also need more work on graduated penalties for repeat non-compliant offenders and issues like managing unregulated e-scooters and e-bikes. Again, that is about catching them rather than some welcome legislation that we have coming later this year in that regard. Others have mentioned the quality of the roads. I second that. Some of the roads are in very bad nick. Again, I have a personal bugbear about what seem to be very low speed limits on dual carriageways. I know traffic has to be managed, including heavy traffic like on the M50, for example, where you cannot go too fast or you will crash, especially in the rain, but sometimes the speed limit on good-quality roads seems to be quite low and then on the regional roads it is way too high. Some work, I have to acknowledge, has been done on that, but we need more. We need more in terms of training in pursuit. Deputy Tóibín mentioned the six gardaí who will be trained by the end of this year. That is too little too late in terms of trying to catch people out and about doing robberies and going up the wrong way on dual carriageways, as we have tragically seen recently. On the insurance issue, I notice that the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland has information that can be shared with the Garda in terms of automatic numberplate recognition etc., but I would love to see insurance discs gone as well as the motor tax discs on cars. There should be a way of working that, maybe not in this legislation but soon. Broadly, I welcome the Bill but we have to put resourcing into enforcement as well.

I thank the Minister of State for being here and introducing this Bill. I will start by acknowledging the 134 deaths this year and the families who have lost their loved ones. I welcome the Bill. There are a number of practical changes in it that I support. It removes the outdated requirement to display a paper motor tax disc, reflecting the fact that gardaí can now check tax status electronically through automatic numberplate recognition. That is a great positive. It strengthens Check My Vehicle, giving people buying a second-hand car better access to official information on a vehicle's tax and roadworthiness status. It allows local authorities to access collision data so they can identify dangerous locations and better target road safety improvements. This is critical to all our communities. I think we have all been in positions where we have flagged areas that are potential black spots for accidents. Anything we can do to join up all the agencies involved in road safety is a positive. The Bill also allows mobile camera van operators to provide certificate evidence rather than routinely attending court. I will speak about court efficiency later but, obviously, that is very much an improvement. Importantly, it allows a jury to return a verdict of careless driving where somebody has been charged with dangerous driving but the evidence supports the lesser offence. This reform arises from Mr. Justice Haughton's report into the tragic death of Shane O'Farrell. There is a significant gap in our road traffic enforcement system that I want to focus on today. It will not be a surprise to the Minister of State, and I thank him for his Department's engagement with me on this issue. It relates to court penalty points, which I have raised with him before. When a court imposes penalty points, we should be able to say with certainty that the sanction actually reaches that driver's record, and at present we cannot. Today's debate is about the national vehicle and driver file. I know Deputies are coming to this debate with road safety in general in mind, but I am trying to focus on the NVDF. As the Minister of State knows, I have been pushing the issue of recording court penalty points since I started to engage with Susan Gray of PARC Road Safety Group. The figures for 2024 that the Department worked on show that almost half of court-issued penalty points were not fully captured on the national vehicle and driver file. It is important to put those figures in context. They include Irish licence holders, foreign licence holders and people who do not hold a driving licence at all. We know that a certain number of court penalty points are not going to get to the NVDF. At the same time, the Department's own analysis found that 19% of unmatched court penalty point offences in 2024 and 2025 could have been matched to an existing driver record and that potentially represents about 1,500 penalty points per year. This is particularly serious because the NVDF is the database that the Garda and motor insurers rely on to establish a driver's status. The system works much better when an offence is dealt with through fixed charge notices because the driver number is captured from the start. The serious weakness arises when the cases go through the courts. People can arrive in court, they may not produce their driver licence and their driver number may not be collected. The Department and the RSA are subsequently left with the task of trying to match the driver numbers with the court sanction, that is, to match it to the correct record. This is particularly concerning because penalty points are cumulative and a driver reaching 12 points, or seven as a learner or novice driver, should be disqualified. I have had assurances from the Department that those cases have been identified and dealt with. However, the fact that the Department's analysis identified cases that could have been matched in the area of penalty points demonstrates why we need to fix the underlying process. This has to be about making the process as effective and efficient as possible. I raised this with the Minister at the transport committee earlier in the year. He also agreed that a fifth of potential court penalty points not being applied was unacceptable, and that the Department can match cases after the event and could continue to do so. I would welcome the Minister of State's feedback today as to whether that is happening. Susan Gray and I have also met with the Courts Service and the Department of Transport on this. I welcome the commitment from the Courts Service to work directly with An Garda Síochána to capture the driver number at the earliest possible stage and carry it throughout the case. I am looking for an update on that today because this Bill gives us the opportunity to clarify that process in court for capturing driver numbers and ensure that information follows the case to the NVDF. First, we should capture the driver number at the beginning of the process, carry it through on the summons into court and then onto the NVDF systems. Second, if necessary, we should change the law so that somebody who has been summonsed for a traffic offence must produce their driving licence or learner permit, and so that the courts staff have the authority they need to capture that information. Third, we should continue to examine historical unmatched cases where the information exists to identify the correct driver. There is another practical issue with the NVDF that I want the Minister of State to address today. Garda members carrying out roadside checks should be able to access the driving licence photograph held on the national vehicle and driver file through their Garda mobility devices. This is something I have been raising for quite a while, and we have had feedback that it is being considered. It would lead to more accuracy, which is essential. In the past there have been mismatches and this would address that. The NVDF contains an enormous of information that can assist enforcement. If a garda stops somebody at the roadside, being able to verify not only the details of the licence but also the photograph associated with that licence would be another useful tool in confirming the person presenting themselves is the actual licenceholder. I want to raise the future ownership of the driver file itself. There was a statement on 29 July that, as part of the reform of the Road Safety Authority, ownership of the driver file element of the NVDF will transfer from the Department of Transport to the RSA. The Department has said it is intended to give the RSA end-to-end ownership of driver-related systems and that it will also include the new offence management system being developed. I understand the logic of consolidating driver services, but the driver file is not simply an administrative database. It is a critical part of our road safety enforcement infrastructure. It is the brain of all the information we retain on drivers, from disqualifications to penalty points and driver numbers. Given the issues we have identified with penalty points and the matching of records, I am asking the Minister of State to set out clearly why he is transferring ownership to the RSA and why he believes that is the right approach. At the moment, I do not quite understand the rationale. We have to join the dots between An Garda Síochána, the Courts Service, the Department of Transport and the RSA. Some information on that would be good. In my remaining time I will speak to Jax's law. As the Minister of State knows, Deputy Barry Ward and I introduced that Bill to the House on First Stage yesterday. Saoirse Aylward was here, as were Jax's father, Nathan, Colleen Langan, who campaigns for her aunt Róisín, and Susan Gray of PARC. While Saoirse had been through a horrific ordeal, she said she had been retraumatised by the justice system and felt that while she was recognised as a victim, the loss of Jax was not. We are asking the Minister of State to examine our legislation. We think we have come up with a viable solution. We hope that as part of this Bill he could consider an amendment to address what we believe is a gap in the law, and look at both recording and publishing the data on that loss of pregnancy in road victims information. As I said, I believe this is a positive Bill. I thank the Minister of State and know he has put a lot of work into it. It is about making the NVDF work harder, better, more effectively and more efficiently. I hope he can take on board some of the ideas and concerns I have presented today.

I welcome the Bill. It is mainly technical, but I want to draw attention to the fact that many Irish roads are becoming increasingly dangerous. You just have to go outside the door here to see people breaking lights on a regular basis. When you are driving on the M50, there is scary stuff happening out there. As others have said, there are rising road deaths and serious collisions caused by dangerous driving. Inadequate Garda enforcement and years of Government inaction have created a safety crisis that is costing lives. It is families across Ireland who are paying the price of Government failure on road safety. Rising road deaths are not unavoidable accidents. They are the consequence of years of underinvestment, inadequate Garda traffic enforcement and a lack of urgency from the Government. They are also down to bad behaviour by drivers. The statistics on those driving the wrong way down motorways are really worrying. The figures are going the wrong way rather than the right way in that regard. I will touch on some issues that are not in the Bill. One of the issues that constantly comes up in my area and across the State is the use of nitrous oxide. It is not a banned substance. Residents ring in to say there is somebody sitting in a car outside their house taking nitrous oxide and driving off. They contact the Garda and are told the fact it is not a banned substance means there is very little the Garda can do about it. This is happening on a regular basis. The evidence can be seen on the side of the road, at parking spots, at beauty spots and so on right across the State. Deputy Mark Ward and I have a Bill coming up. We are hoping there might be something in relation to that. A couple of things are happening in the community. There are stolen cars. I have been a victim myself. My car was robbed recently. I was lying in bed when someone went around using the fob. It impacts on communities. I was away for a couple of days and got a phone message from a woman saying there was a stolen car in her area. It was 1.40 p.m. For four days, there were stolen cars in that community. I remember trying to deal with this issue 20 or 25 years ago. Many of us thought this was behind us but, unfortunately, it is on the rise again. Some of it is down to the new technology as well. Cars are not safe enough. I want to talk about scramblers. I was driving along the quays opposite the High Court and a guy was coming down with a balaclava on his head. We had the incident of Deputy Michael Healy-Rae getting assaulted and it will be up before the court but this guy had a balaclava on and was on a scrambler bike on one of the main roads in Dublin right across from the courts. We are allowing this to happen in our city. That was on the quays but it is happening in my area as well. The gardaí have tried to respond, seize vehicles and so on but we are not doing enough. We need to empower the gardaí. It is probably a non-issue for the Bill today but we all need to wake up in this House to what is happening in our communities. Theft of cars is on the rise. It is in many working-class communities but not exclusively so. They are robbing the cars from everywhere and people have to deal with the financial loss of that. In many cases, it is older cars; it is the car that brings the kids to school or the car that brings people to shops. We need to do more and look at new ways of tackling these issues.

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit ar ais tar éis an tsamhraidh. Is deas é a fheiceáil. There are parts of this Bill I really welcome, particularly moving towards better digital records. That is something I have continuously pushed for in this House. I congratulate the Minister of State and the Department staff for all the work that went into this. However, it will be better if I say what I do not like and what I want to see improved - namely, enforcement. I spoke in this House yesterday about supporting gardaí before they become gardaí, while they are gardaí and after they are gardaí. We can do a lot better as a State. I come from four generations of policemen: my father, my grandad, my great-grandad and the grandad before that were all policemen, going back to before the foundation of the State, so I have a long line of people who knew how to deter crime. My dad was a sergeant in the traffic department in Dublin city for 35 years and I saw at first hand when he would come home and be shook from seeing car accidents. It is probably the reason I did not get a motorbike as a young lad. I see and I hear from listening to gardaí nowadays that we are not giving them the support they need in the job or financially. I have continuously asked for tax incentives and tax breaks for critical workers, be it gardaí, nurses or teachers, in Dublin, Galway, Cork or any of the cities where the rent is higher. It is something we can do which will incentivise more gardaí, nurses or teachers, and give them financial support. It will also help gardaí be better at the job because they will not have the small financial worries that they would not have if they were in a less expensive area, working the same job and doing the same hours that city gardaí are doing. Focusing on the Bill, we need rules that can actually be enforced. I heard Deputy Gogarty speaking earlier about enforcement that creates a deterrent and the policies that change behaviour. I proudly represent Dublin Bay North and I hear about the consequences of transport policy every day on my commute if I am taking public transport, with the 130 bus being cancelled eight times yesterday, with the roadworks being done and with being told these traffic jams are constant and with allowing people to then use rat runs, speeding through residential areas in Marino, putting people's children at risk. I see it constantly. When one road closes, then capacity changes. Having been on Dublin City Council, I find the traffic plans and the diversions really frustrating. While I always want to see traffic policy being data driven, we should know what happens after we close a road or alter a major junction. Pedestrianising a route or making a route one-way with an outdated traffic plan, which I have seen across north Dublin, is not acceptable. Elected officials should have a greater say. People put their trust in elected officials. To have an unelected engineer determine what happens to a road is not acceptable. What is the point of holding an election if an entire road or area can be changed without the push-back of an elected official? There are measures I would like to see in the Bill. We should have the same approach consistently. One of the strongest parts of the Bill, and one which I commend, is the provision to allow local authorities receive and process collision data. As has been mentioned by multiple Deputies, it has long been needed. I welcome it. When councils can identify locations where collisions are occurring, they can target investment accordingly. That is using data. That is what this whole Bill is about but that is the kind of evidence-led policy I would like to see across Departments. Be it energy or health, we need to put resources where there are pinch points. On speeding, there are some very practical things we could do. People need clearer, more frequent signs showing speed limits on the stretches of road they are travelling on. There are areas in my constituency where there have been repeated accidents and where a wall has been built six times because people are speeding. Since a camera showing the live speed was installed, the wall is still intact. People are seeing that flashing LED. It changes driving and the data shows that. Also, the wall being there shows that. We should make far greater use of solar-powered speed feedback signs. It is not being done. They would tell a driver instantly that they are doing 55 km/h in a 50 km/h zone and must slow down. It is simple, visible and immediate. When somebody repeatedly ignores the limit there has to be enforcement. I have travelled to other countries where I have seen instant tickets being given to people who are repeatedly speeding and it would definitely deter people. I would support this as that speeding ticket could be the deterrent that stops someone speeding again and saves someone's life. I heard a lot of Deputies talking about the incident on the M7. That is something we need to discuss but the systems and what we are doing need to be changed. I welcome the proposal in the Bill that will end the requirement to display the paper motor task disk. The State already holds vehicle information electronically and the Bill will modernise that and remove the paper disc requirement. I think that makes sense. We should use digital records, rather than maintaining paperwork for the sake of tradition. It would speed up the process and allow for Garda stop points to have a quicker flow of traffic. We should examine how motor taxation works and whether it can be linked to fuel consumption, so that when somebody can drive less, there is an incentive to do so. The issue I want to spend more time on is e-scooters, which were mentioned by Deputy Crowe. We need to stop pretending that e-scooters, electric bikes and scramblers are all the same thing. Outside this House people can get an ordinary legal e-bike. When I was parking outside my house the other day, I saw two young lads on a bike going down the road faster than I can drive, and they had no helmets. By the time I would have called the local Garda station to say they were coming, they would have already gone past it. Powerful electric bikes can already fall into a category with e-mopeds with regard to registration and other legal requirements. People in north Dublin are constantly onto my office speaking about their child having been nearly run over or having been hit and this is something on which we need to allow better enforcement by gardaí. We need to have this serious discussion. We should also examine whether some form of identifiable registration should apply to e-scooters. I do not think it is acceptable that people with phones can be jumped on O'Connell Street by someone on an e-scooter and there is no way to easily track who owns that scooter. If that vehicle was registered and the ownership was clearly visible, it would deter them being used for crime. With regard to drug dealing across the inner city and my constituency, at night we can see people visibly shifting drugs on these e-scooters because they know they will not be chased by gardaí if they go off road. We need to support and empower gardaí. Speaking about enforcement brings me back to An Garda Síochána. It is easy for us to pass another law in the House and say the Garda will enforce it but gardaí need resources. With regard to numbers, I have given one suggestion on how we can increase the number of gardaí in Dublin by giving incentives and tax breaks to gardaí and critical workers. We also need more road policing units. They need equipment to test the so-called bikes. I welcome the recent announcement by An Garda Síochána of the seizures of these e-scooters. It shows that when there is a will they can get results. When gardaí do their job lawfully and proportionately within their training, they should be supported for doing it. This does not mean gardaí are above scrutiny - far from it. No one in this country should be. However, accountability should not mean leaving individual members afraid to intervene against dangerous behaviour because they fear that doing their job will leave them exposed. I welcome the better digital records and data the Minister of State is introducing and the measures that will help to save lives. I hope he takes on board some of the other considerations I have mentioned with regard to supporting gardaí and allowing them to do their jobs, and when they leave the Garda they should be supported the whole way through.

I thank all of the Deputies for their contributions to this debate and for the careful consideration they have given to the Bill. I acknowledge their concerns and the practical issues raised on Second Stage. I might take a little bit of time to refer to some of the issues. Deputy Farrelly spoke about education. It is important to say the RSA piloted a scheme during the academic year 2024-25 that delivered training to teachers in almost 140 schools. In 2026, the RSA aims to have completed a national roll-out to transition year in 730 post-primary schools, expanding the capacity for new learning sessions in the first and third quarters of this year. I agree wholeheartedly that education is of paramount importance. We are delivering education through RSA teaching units in preschools, primary schools, secondary schools and third level institutions and a lot of work is going on in this regard. I have come across children who have done these programmes and I have asked them what they have learned, especially with regard to bicycles. The first thing they told me was that they learned how to stop the bike, which is, quite simply, the most important thing. Several other issues have come up. In relation to Garda enforcement and the protection and training of gardaí, I met the Garda assistant commissioner with responsibility for road policing, Department of justice officials and my officials to discuss what gardaí need in terms of training, pursuit training and legislation. The Garda has given us a list of two or three issues on which it wants us to formulate legislation to help gardaí do their jobs properly. These are being looked at by departmental officials and we will bring forward legislation as urgently as we can. Whether we bring it in through this Bill or in a separate Bill on an emergency basis, we are working on it. I want to make sure that whatever we bring in will work and will help gardaí. We are in ongoing discussions with the Department of justice and the Garda on it and we are working on it. With this legislation we are bringing forward, and other measures such as body cameras, gardaí have more technical backup and more resources to do the job they have to do. I would love to see 1,000 gardaí in the road policing unit. We do not have them but I am working with the Garda, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and the Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, to see how best we can help gardaí and get more of them out there. The message should not go out from here that there is no enforcement because there is. Gardaí now use drone technology to see what is going on with scramblers and e-scooters. With regard to e-scooters, we have brought in a regulation on hi-vis vests, visibility and helmets. Next week I hope to sign more regulations to change the minimum age from 16 to 18. I hope to get it signed next week. We have other proposed legislation to redefine an e-scooter to make it a mechanically propelled vehicle. We are going through how we can bring it in and how we can end up with registered e-scooters so we know who the owners are. This is very simple and will be a help to gardaí. Somebody mentioned NCT waiting times. The NCT service has seen an annual increase of more than 30% since 2020 in the number of tests being done. At the moment there are 721 vehicle inspectors in the NCT service. The number of vehicles tested in July was 159,000, so there is a lot of testing going on. Somebody mentioned that 60% or 50% fail the test. I would prefer to see a vehicle failing a test if it is not right than it being let out on the road. We will have to have a common-sense approach on this. Somebody else mentioned driver licence exchanges with the USA. We have a licence agreement with Australia and with seven of the ten Canadian provinces. We have another proposed agreement under way with Nova Scotia. In the programme for Government, the RSA is dealing with New York state, Massachusetts and New Jersey to exchange technical details with regard to how they do their driving tests compared with ours, and whether they match our standards. Each of the United States has different rules, regulations and standards so we cannot have an overall measure for the US but have to look at each state individually. We are working on this. With regard to speed limits, we reduced the speed limit on local roads from 80 km/h to 60 km/h. These account for 80% of the road network. The local authorities are now charged to have the changes in urban areas in place by March of next year and they are working on this. With this legislation we will be able to reduce the speed limit on the remainder of the roads from 100 km/h to 80 km/h. We also say clearly that at the end of the day speed limits are not a licence to drive at that speed. People have to drive with total control of their vehicle at all times. Legitimate questions have been raised by Deputies in the House while we have been discussing this legislation. It is all in the interest of having safer roads, reducing the number of deaths on the roads and reducing collisions to make sure everybody can feel safer on our roads. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, is sitting behind me. We are working very closely in the Department and we discussed a lot of what we are speaking about today at our management meeting yesterday. It included what we can do and how we can improve our efficiencies to make sure our roads are safe. This Bill itself is not the entire answer. There is a lot more we have to do in terms of legislation. We then have the challenge of making sure that when we bring in legislation, it is acted upon. Deputy Currie raised the issue of court services and licensing. We are working on that at the moment to see how we can best deal with it. I intend to bring forward amendments to the Bill. We will be making additional improvements on Committee Stage, and I look forward to working with Deputies across the House to make sure we get this Bill enacted as quickly as possible with the amendments I intend to bring in on that Stage. I thank the Members for their time. It has been a very interesting and worthwhile debate. It is important to thank Deputies because all they have in their heads is to try to reduce the number of road deaths. Everybody makes a personal choice when they go out on the road, whether they are a pedestrian, cyclist, motorcyclist or the driver of a car or a truck. They have to take personal responsibility, and that is most important. We can bring in the laws and the legislation to help protect people, but we have to start with education. Speeding and failing to wear seat belts are problems. We all know that phone distraction is a huge problem in cars. I plead with every Deputy to make sure that when they are talking to young people in their constituencies, they ask them not to use their phones when they are in their cars.

Lots of TDs do it as well.