National Vehicle and Driver File, Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Barry Ward (FG), Dún Laoghaire

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.

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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