Eamon Gilmore TD

eamon gilmore » news

DEFERRAL OF PLAN ONLY WAY TO DEAL WITH LICENCE SHAMBLES

Issued : Tuesday 30 October, 2007

The Leader of the Labour Party, Eamon Gilmore TD, has called for the deferral of new regulations on provisional drivers due to come into operation from next Tuesday.

Describing the current situation as a total shambles, Deputy Gilmore said that the mishandling of the issue by the Minister for Transport, Noel Dempsey, had undermined the new Road Safety Strategy, brought the law into disrepute and caused anguish for tens of thousands of young drivers and their families.

"Ironically there is widespread political and public acceptance of the need to removal the anomaly in our driver system that allowed the holder of a second provisional licence to drive without having to be accompanied by a full licence holder. However, what should have been an easily achievable objective has been turned into absolute farce by a lack of planning and a failure to consider the consequences of imposing an impossible timeframe for the completion of such a major change.

"It was never going to be feasible to introduce such a major change in our licence regime at four days notice, especially over a bank holiday weekend. People were confronted by advertisements on Friday morning essentially telling them that if they drove to work on Tuesday morning, as they had been doing up to this, they would be breaking the law.

"And it is simply not good enough for Minister Dempsey to say, ‘well, the law won't be fully applied for three months'. He cannot give a guarantee that individual Gardai will not apply the law rigidly from Tuesday. What is more there is now a serious question mark over the insurance status of drivers with second provisional licences.

"The only way out of this shambles is for this change to be deferred for a specific period of time - certainly at least six months - to allow it to be phased in and to permit those with second licences to apply for and take their driving tests.

"The chaos created by this announcement by is unfortunately symptomatic of the shambolic record of this government on so many issues, many of which have also been the responsibility of the same Minister.

.

"This is an inept and incompetent government that does not deserve to be in office, never mind pay themselves the lavish salary increases agreed during the week."