I would like to have some information from the Minister with regard to Part 1 of the Schedule dealing with the Motor Car Act of 1903. Is the Minister in a position to lift the veil of mystery that surrounds the delay in regard to the introduction of the Traffic Regulation Bill? Each year the necessity for such a Bill is discussed and universally admitted. We got to the stage at one time that an Inter-Departmental Committee was appointed to inquire into the whole position. The Committee heard a considerable amount of evidence in public, and eventually presented its report some time in 1928. A year ago the Minister asked permission to introduce the Traffic Bill, and permission was granted. He expressed the hope that the Bill would be in the hands of Deputies before the Oireachtas met in the Spring. When the Oireachtas met early this year the Minister asked permission to withdraw the Bill. The Bill, in fact, had never appeared; he asked permission not to produce it, and he expressed the hope that the Bill would be introduced before the Summer Recess. The Summer Recess came, but there was no Bill. Then, on the 27th of last month, a debate took place in the other House, and the Minister answered criticisms there by expressing the hope that the Bill would be introduced before the Winter Recess, the Recess that took place last week. That Recess came and there was no Bill. We must now wait for at least two months before we see the Bill, unless Santa Claus brings it by way of the chimney.
Whilst making every conceivable allowance for the multitude of complicated questions that must be considered before a Bill of this kind is put into official form, one finds it exceedingly difficult to know what is the real reason for the repeated adjournments and the non-fulfilment of promises. I do not know if it is that the Government have no ideas on the matter, or that they have so many ideas they find it difficult to put them into a Bill. They have had an example given them in Northern Ireland, and a still greater example in the Bill which recently became an Act in the British Parliament. The Minister has at least the advantage of being able to look at these measures and get some ideas from them.
In view of the revolution which has taken place in transport within recent years it is almost inconceivable to think that the legislation upon which our traffic laws are based was passed at a time when the motor car was almost a curiosity; it was certainly a novelty. During 1929 buses plying for hire in the Free State covered 24,000,000 miles. They carried 48,000,000 passengers and took £860,000 in receipts. We have a vast number of lorries of various kinds operating on all sorts of roads. In the Free State in 1925 there were 29,000 motor vehicles of various kinds registered; in 1930 that number had increased to 47,000, an increase in five years of about 60 per cent. Notwithstanding that we go along placidly as if nothing was happening.
I would like to point out that during nine months of the present year the mileage of buses has increased by 1,500,000 miles and the passengers carried by over 2,000,000. It will be seen from these figures that it is a rapidly-growing traffic. The absurdity of the present position will be realised when we all know that the legal speed limit at the moment is 20 miles per hour for ordinary motor vehicles and about 12 miles per hour for buses. We treat the law with contempt in that respect, and the whole position could be remedied by the introduction of the promised Traffic Bill.
There is no control in regard to the issue of licences. There are one hundred and one different authorities for issuing licences. A boy of seventeen can drive a bus carrying anything up to 40 or 50 passengers. A boy over fourteen years can take out a licence and drive a motor bicycle. We know that a very large proportion of road accidents are due to motor cyclists, yet the position is that the boy a day over fourteen years can get a licence and tear along the road with a girl on the pillion behind him on one of these terrible engines of destruction.
