National Vehicle and Driver File, Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17 ============================================================ Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan 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. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-17