National Vehicle and Driver File, Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17 ============================================================ Seán Canney (IND), Galway East I thank all of the Deputies for their contributions to this debate and for the careful consideration they have given to the Bill. I acknowledge their concerns and the practical issues raised on Second Stage. I might take a little bit of time to refer to some of the issues. Deputy Farrelly spoke about education. It is important to say the RSA piloted a scheme during the academic year 2024-25 that delivered training to teachers in almost 140 schools. In 2026, the RSA aims to have completed a national roll-out to transition year in 730 post-primary schools, expanding the capacity for new learning sessions in the first and third quarters of this year. I agree wholeheartedly that education is of paramount importance. We are delivering education through RSA teaching units in preschools, primary schools, secondary schools and third level institutions and a lot of work is going on in this regard. I have come across children who have done these programmes and I have asked them what they have learned, especially with regard to bicycles. The first thing they told me was that they learned how to stop the bike, which is, quite simply, the most important thing. Several other issues have come up. In relation to Garda enforcement and the protection and training of gardaí, I met the Garda assistant commissioner with responsibility for road policing, Department of justice officials and my officials to discuss what gardaí need in terms of training, pursuit training and legislation. The Garda has given us a list of two or three issues on which it wants us to formulate legislation to help gardaí do their jobs properly. These are being looked at by departmental officials and we will bring forward legislation as urgently as we can. Whether we bring it in through this Bill or in a separate Bill on an emergency basis, we are working on it. I want to make sure that whatever we bring in will work and will help gardaí. We are in ongoing discussions with the Department of justice and the Garda on it and we are working on it. With this legislation we are bringing forward, and other measures such as body cameras, gardaí have more technical backup and more resources to do the job they have to do. I would love to see 1,000 gardaí in the road policing unit. We do not have them but I am working with the Garda, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and the Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, to see how best we can help gardaí and get more of them out there. The message should not go out from here that there is no enforcement because there is. Gardaí now use drone technology to see what is going on with scramblers and e-scooters. With regard to e-scooters, we have brought in a regulation on hi-vis vests, visibility and helmets. Next week I hope to sign more regulations to change the minimum age from 16 to 18. I hope to get it signed next week. We have other proposed legislation to redefine an e-scooter to make it a mechanically propelled vehicle. We are going through how we can bring it in and how we can end up with registered e-scooters so we know who the owners are. This is very simple and will be a help to gardaí. Somebody mentioned NCT waiting times. The NCT service has seen an annual increase of more than 30% since 2020 in the number of tests being done. At the moment there are 721 vehicle inspectors in the NCT service. The number of vehicles tested in July was 159,000, so there is a lot of testing going on. Somebody mentioned that 60% or 50% fail the test. I would prefer to see a vehicle failing a test if it is not right than it being let out on the road. We will have to have a common-sense approach on this. Somebody else mentioned driver licence exchanges with the USA. We have a licence agreement with Australia and with seven of the ten Canadian provinces. We have another proposed agreement under way with Nova Scotia. In the programme for Government, the RSA is dealing with New York state, Massachusetts and New Jersey to exchange technical details with regard to how they do their driving tests compared with ours, and whether they match our standards. Each of the United States has different rules, regulations and standards so we cannot have an overall measure for the US but have to look at each state individually. We are working on this. With regard to speed limits, we reduced the speed limit on local roads from 80 km/h to 60 km/h. These account for 80% of the road network. The local authorities are now charged to have the changes in urban areas in place by March of next year and they are working on this. With this legislation we will be able to reduce the speed limit on the remainder of the roads from 100 km/h to 80 km/h. We also say clearly that at the end of the day speed limits are not a licence to drive at that speed. People have to drive with total control of their vehicle at all times. Legitimate questions have been raised by Deputies in the House while we have been discussing this legislation. It is all in the interest of having safer roads, reducing the number of deaths on the roads and reducing collisions to make sure everybody can feel safer on our roads. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, is sitting behind me. We are working very closely in the Department and we discussed a lot of what we are speaking about today at our management meeting yesterday. It included what we can do and how we can improve our efficiencies to make sure our roads are safe. This Bill itself is not the entire answer. There is a lot more we have to do in terms of legislation. We then have the challenge of making sure that when we bring in legislation, it is acted upon. Deputy Currie raised the issue of court services and licensing. We are working on that at the moment to see how we can best deal with it. I intend to bring forward amendments to the Bill. We will be making additional improvements on Committee Stage, and I look forward to working with Deputies across the House to make sure we get this Bill enacted as quickly as possible with the amendments I intend to bring in on that Stage. I thank the Members for their time. It has been a very interesting and worthwhile debate. It is important to thank Deputies because all they have in their heads is to try to reduce the number of road deaths. Everybody makes a personal choice when they go out on the road, whether they are a pedestrian, cyclist, motorcyclist or the driver of a car or a truck. They have to take personal responsibility, and that is most important. We can bring in the laws and the legislation to help protect people, but we have to start with education. Speeding and failing to wear seat belts are problems. We all know that phone distraction is a huge problem in cars. I plead with every Deputy to make sure that when they are talking to young people in their constituencies, they ask them not to use their phones when they are in their cars. --- 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