Speech by Minster for Transport, Tourism & Sport Leo Varadkar at the 46th CIECA Congress in Dublin Castle

President, Karl Hakuli; Distinguished Guests, Speakers Ladies and Gentlemen – I am very pleased to be here with you this morning at the 46th CIECA Congress, which is being hosted this year by Ireland’s Road Safety Authority. I would like to extend a special welcome to all of the international delegates who have come here today from across the world, from places as far apart as Korea, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.

I hope you will all find this conference enjoyable and instructive.

As I am Minister for Tourism as well as for Transport, let me also say how glad I am that CIECA has chosen Ireland as the venue for this conference. Dublin Castle has a history stretching back over 800 years, and I hope that during your time here you will get a chance to visit it properly. I also hope that that you will have a time to see and enjoy something of Dublin, and maybe other parts of Ireland too, during your time here.

This Congress is a very important event in the road safety calendar. The discussions yesterday and again today will go a long way towards achieving CIECA’s aim of improving driving standards and driver education, thereby contributing to the effort to save lives and prevent serious injuries on roads.

And indeed this reflects our own objectives here in Ireland as we strive to develop a programme of driver training and testing that promotes lifelong safe and socially responsible road use.

It is also particularly apt that the conference should be taking place in Ireland, as this year we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the introduction of the driving test here in Ireland.

The first driving test in Ireland was carried out on the eighteenth of March, 1964. Circumstances were very different then. And it’s hard to imagine that this was the same year that Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize, Lyndon Johnson was re-elected president of the United States, and Northern Rhodesia became the Independent nation of Zambia.

In Ireland, as in other parts of the world, the structure of roads, the environment on roads, and the requirements of driver learning and testing, were very different half a century ago.

Vehicles were much simpler, roads – certainly in Ireland – much narrower, traffic far less dense. The kind of training and the kind of testing appropriate to those days has long since become redundant, and we, like other countries, have made many changes in order to reflect the changing circumstances of driving over the decades.

I have no doubt that we will always need to be ready to adapt in this way, as new technologies change the driving experience in decades to come.

The CIECA Congress is another important building block in developing new policies and practices for driver education and testing. The range of speakers at the Congress, yesterday and again today, highlights just how important this issue is, both across the EU and in the wider international community.

Last year, we launched a Government Road Safety Strategy which runs from 2013 to 2020. This Strategy has as its focus a reduction in deaths and serious injuries. Our aim is to ‘close the gap’ between Ireland and best performing countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK. But this will not be possible unless road safety is a treated as a shared responsibility, with co-operation and coordination by all of the agencies, national and international, working to save lives and prevent injuries as a result of road collisions.

One of the aims of the Strategy is for Irish agencies to work with relevant EU and international bodies to ensure best practice initiatives are implemented here albeit adapted for the Irish context. Indeed, the RSA’s partnership with CIECA is an important demonstration of this, and we look forward to an ongoing relationship that reflects our mutual aim of making our roads safer.

Last year, 190 people died on our roads here in Ireland. This was the first time for many years that there was an increase on the previous year. It was a sobering reminder of the need to be vigilant and maintain the momentum behind improving road safety. Although we have seen significant improvements in our road safety over the past decade, we must always ask ourselves –Is there more we can do to make our roads safer?

We know that there are many factors involved in improving road safety. The quality of the road infrastructure itself, and the quality and reliability of vehicles are of enormous importance. However, I think most of us agree that, ultimately, the most important factor is that drivers be both competent and responsible. If external factors such as road surface, mechanical reliability, even weather, can have a causal role in causing collisions, the human factor is the most significant of all. Good drivers can overcome bad driving conditions; bad drivers can cause accidents no matter how good the conditions.

For this reason, our Road Safety Strategy acknowledges the importance of driver education, and testing of that education. As the Strategy says: ‘Training, as part of the driver testing and licensing programmes, will play a substantial role in enhancing behaviour, improving skills and reducing error making. Such training must be continually assessed and developed.’

As part of our commitment to raising driving standards, we in Ireland are introducing a Graduated Driver Licensing System in several stages. We have brought in lower alcohol limits for learner and inexperienced drivers. We have brought in compulsory lessons for learners. This summer, following from legislation which I introduced early this year, we will introduce the concept of a Novice Driver – a person in their first two years of their full licence – In due course, learners and novices will face disqualification at a lower level of penalty points than other drivers.

This is all intended to ensure that learners – and novices – focus on acquiring skills and experience rather than on simply passing a test. As you may know, one of the most dangerous periods in a driver’s life can be the immediate aftermath of passing the driving test, when they full of confidence, mistakenly feel that they have no more to learn.

Among the further measures which we are considering introducing as part of the Graduated Driver Licensing System is a hazard perception test. How a driver’s perception of hazard should be tested, and at what stage in the learning process remains to be decided. It could be assessed as part of the driving test or later, as a novice.

As we look to develop a hazard perception test for use in Ireland, the outcome of this Congress will be of real interest to us. You all possess a wealth of experience and can offer views and opinions from all over the world. With the RSA, I look forward to considering the views and ideas expressed here. I have no doubt that they will play a major role in helping us to move forward in this area.

I hope you all have a very productive and informative day and I look forward to hearing about the conclusions of the Congress.

Thank you.