National Vehicle and Driver File, Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Paul Nicholas Gogarty (IND), Dublin Mid-West

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.

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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