I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
I start by expressing my appreciation to the House for facilitating the introduction of this Bill and the debate today at such short notice. I greatly appreciate the Opposition spokespersons agreeing to take the Bill. The Bill itself is short, as it comprises only five sections. It is in essence a technical instrument needed to provide legal clarity regarding an important element of the code of legislation applying to drink driving. That will facilitate effective enforcement by the Garda Síochána. It will also remove a possible basis for challenge to future prosecutions regarding certain drink driving offences.
The House will recall that last year the Road Traffic Act 2002 was passed. While the headline provision in that Act was the introduction of a legislative basis for the penalty points system, the Act introduced a range of other initiatives aimed at improving road safety and maximising the deterrent effects of road traffic legislation generally. One of those provisions was aimed at extending the legal basis for the taking of preliminary breath tests from drivers. That was set out in section 10 of the Act, which provided for the substitution of section 12 of the Road Traffic Act 1994.
Section 10 of the 2002 Act provided for the introduction of an extension to the grounds on which a member of the Garda may require a driver to submit to a preliminary breath test. The original grounds for requiring that such a test be taken related only to circumstances where the member of the Garda was of the opinion that the driver had consumed alcohol. The new section provided that, where a driver was either involved in an accident or in the opinion of a member of the Garda Síochána had committed a traffic offence, he or she could be required to submit to a breath test. In the course of preparing to bring those new provisions into effect, my Department received legal advice that suggested that the wording regarding the taking of samples from drivers involved in accidents could be open to a very narrow interpretation which would compromise the central aim of the provision.
Following consideration of the legal advice, I concluded that I should not postpone the introduction of additional powers to combat drink driving pending amendment of the Road Traffic Act. Therefore, I decided to introduce the remaining elements of the new section with effect from 1 December next to coincide with the pre-Christmas anti-drink driving campaign mounted by the National Safety Council and the Garda Síochána.
In preparing for the commencement of that provision, a separate and unforeseen legal difficulty was identified. I received legal advice which suggested that a sequencing change in the new section could cast doubt on the power of the Garda to arrest a person who had refused to submit to a preliminary breath test for the purpose of demanding that the person submit to a blood, urine or evidential breath test.
I was presented with a dilemma. Should I abandon my stated intention to extend the scope for operation of the preliminary breath testing from 1 December next or should I request the Government to seek the agreement of the Oireachtas to address the technical difficulties that had come to notice so that we can give practical effect to the measures the Oireachtas has already approved? The Government endorsed my view that we should remedy such technical flaws at the earliest opportunity in the interests of promoting measures to combat drink driving at a time when they are likely to make the most significant impact. The Bill which I am promoting today will ensure that the Garda Síochána have the powers which the Oireachtas intended they should have to address the issue of drink driving.
The passing by the Oireachtas of the Road Traffic Bill 2002 and the subsequent launch of the penalty points system, initially in respect of speeding offences, has provided the catalyst for a significant reduction in road deaths over the past 12 months. While overall trends in road safety have been positive for the past number of years, primarily as a result of the pursuit of an integrated approach promoted by the Government's road safety strategy, the scale of the recent improvements has been very significant. It is probably true to suggest that in the 12 months since penalty points were introduced, some 76 fewer people have died on our roads than would otherwise have been expected.
However, while the overall position in relation to road safety has improved, the position in relation to drink driving remains worryingly unacceptable. The number of detections of drink driving remains consistently high and the results of the testing systems reveal that the depth of the problem is not diminishing. The Garda made some 11,200 detections of drink driving offences in 2002. Approximately 90% of blood and urine specimens and 81% of breath specimens analysed in 2002 by the Medical Bureau of Road Safety were above the legal limit. However, what is even more worrying is that over half of those who failed blood or urine tests and almost one third of those who failed evidential breath tests had alcohol contents that were twice as high as the legal limit.
The number of road accidents occurring between the hours of 9 p.m. and 3 a.m., the hours most commonly associated with drink driving, has been reducing in recent years, with 10.4% fewer fatal accidents occurring during these hours in 2001 than in 1997. While these reductions are welcome, we cannot definitively say that a reduction in accidents caused by drink driving has taken place. International research indicates that alcohol is a factor in up to 40% of road accidents. Estimates in Ireland suggest that alcohol is a factor in 33% of fatal accidents. There is therefore a clear case for directing this proposed enhancement of the enforcement of drink driving legislation at drivers involved in accidents. A similar argument can be made in relation to incidents where motorists breach traffic laws.
My intention in announcing the introduction of the extended basis for the taking of preliminary roadside breath tests was to enhance and maximise the impact of the anti-drink driving campaign I launched last week on behalf of the National Safety Council and the Garda. The focus of the initiative was to heighten the level of the deterrent by broadening the scope for preliminary testing at least to include the circumstances where a driver had committed a traffic offence. I emphasise that my objective is to change driver behaviour by bringing home to drivers their responsibilities to themselves, their families and other road users.
However, having realised the difficulties that could have arisen had I proceeded as planned, I determined that the best approach would be to address those difficulties but to also amend the original wording presented for the extension of preliminary testing in the 2002 Act so that I would be in a position to bring into effect a scheme which would more accurately reflect the will of the Oireachtas in passing that Act in the first instance. The immediate purpose of this Bill is to address those two key issues.
The key provisions can be found in sections 2 and 3 of the Bill. Section 2 provides for the substitution of section 12 of the Road Traffic Act 1994. The section will replace section 10 of the Road Traffic Act 2002, which sought to achieve the same objective. However, as I have already mentioned, I received advice that suggested there might be difficulties implementing this section in full. The new section presented in this Bill addresses those issues while retaining the overall focus of the provision in the 2002 Act.
The particular difficulty with the original wording was that it was open to a view that in order for a member of the Garda to require that a driver undergo a preliminary breath test after his or her involvement in an accident, the member of the Garda would have had to witness the accident. This new section addresses that and introduces some relatively minor additional text changes from the original. The overall purpose of this section and the section it replaces, section 12 of the Road Traffic Act 1994, provides the legislative basis for the operation of roadside preliminary breath testing of drivers by the Garda for the purpose of establishing whether or not the driver has consumed alcohol. However, as a direct result of the introduction this new section, the basis for the operation of that system will be extended.
Under the terms of the new section, where a member of the Garda is of the opinion that the driver of a mechanically-propelled vehicle has been involved in a collision, has committed any offence under the Road Traffic Acts or has consumed alcohol, the member may demand that the driver submit to a preliminary breath test. The original powers available to the Garda only related to the position where the member was of the opinion that a driver had consumed alcohol.
Section 3 of the Bill provides for a technical amendment to section 13 of the Road Traffic Act 1994 so that the current reference in that section to section 12(3) will be changed to refer to section 12(4). The reason for this change is that the current section 12(3) provides the Garda with the power to arrest any driver who refuses to comply with any requirement under that section. Those requirements relate to submitting to the preliminary breath test, accompanying a garda to a place to facilitate the taking of the sample or to remaining for up to one hour with the garda so that an apparatus for the taking of the preliminary test can be provided. Where a person refuses to comply with any of those requirements, he or she is committing an offence and may be arrested and required to go to a Garda station where they will be required under section 13 of the Road Traffic Act 1994 to submit to a blood, urine or evidential breath test.
The difficulty which has been noted in regard to the existing text of that latter section refers to the power of arrest in section 12 as being created through subsection (3). While that is the position at present, with the commencement of the new section 12, which will be facilitated by the commencement of section 2 of this Bill, the power of arrest will be provided for in subsection (4). In order to ensure that there can be no question relating to the powers of arrest and the powers to demand that a driver submits to a test under section 13, I consider that it would be appropriate to make the amendment proposed in section 3 of this Bill.
Section 4 of the Bill provides for the repeal of section 10 of the Road Traffic Act 2002, given that it is being replaced by section 2 of this Bill.
I repeat that while these amendments are of a technical nature, they are important in that they will allow me to proceed immediately to provide the Garda with the powers to operate the more broadly based scheme of roadside breath testing envisaged in the 2002 Act. However, as I have indicated recently, it is my intention to move quickly to legislate for what is normally termed as full random breath testing and I hope to bring forward proposals to provide for such a scheme for the approval of the House in the new year.
I express my gratitude to Opposition spokespersons, particularly Deputies Naughten and Shortall, for agreeing at short notice to take this Bill, which is substantially of a technical nature and required for the start of the process of random testing on 1 December.