Road safety is not being taken seriously by this Government; that is a fact. We have all the legislation but no enforcement. Legislation does not mean tuppenny damn if we do not enforce it. Let us consider the new legislation the Government's bought in yesterday for scramblers. I have spoken to representatives of the Garda. They say gardaí do not have the ability or the right to pursue an individual on a scrambler. The press statement put out yesterday said that there will be pursuit of individual scramblers. Gardaí are not trained to do it. One of the most dangerous things they can do is pursue somebody in a particular situation like this. There has been no discussion with the Garda representative organisations on this at all. The day after the Government announced the legislation on scramblers, we are in limbo as to whether or not anybody can be pursued for it. That is a really significant problem in. If a garda does pursue and someone dies, they could be brought before Fiosrú. They could be stood down. They could find themselves in a civil court defending the fact they pursued without any training. Those gardaí have the same licences the Minister of State has in terms of pursuit. The Minister of State will be embarrassed by the figures I am going to read out now. Figures show that between 2021 and 2024, 32,700 drivers were disqualified. Of those, a third did not even have a bloody licence, an incredible situation. Of the 21,000 who did have a licence, only 5,000 bothered to surrender them afterwards to the people they were meant to surrender them to. There were people disqualified in those years who had already been disqualified twice. They were driving and they were disqualified, they were driving again and were disqualified again, and they were driving yet again and were disqualified yet again. What difference does the bloody legislation mean at all if the Government will not put in place the number of gardaí that is necessary? Garda numbers have fallen significantly in the last number of years. There has been a 40% fall in the number of traffic gardaí and behaviours are changing as a result.

Sentiment score: -0.14