National Vehicle and Driver File, Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17 ============================================================ Barry Heneghan (IND), Dublin Bay North 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. --- 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