Sir, - How can the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Mr Bobby Molloy, realistically believe that a reduction in road deaths of 20 per cent by 2002 is achievable (The Irish Times, February 8th), when many of the proposed traffic safety measures, such as provision of the penalty-points system, have still not been implemented?
The months are slipping by and still there are no tangible on-the-road results from the strategy. A Road Traffic Bill, but without physical application on Ireland's roads, it is analogous in the information technology sense to a computer project devoid of a computer application, i.e. vapourware.
It is also ironic that the Mr Molloy should blame information technology for delays in introducing the penalty-points system. The Government never misses an opportunity to claim that Ireland is the IT capital of Europe. So why is it so difficult to substantiate that claim within Ireland's civil infrastructure?
Had the Government's five-year road safety strategy been a corporate IT programme, it would have by now been killed off because of ineptitude. - Yours, etc.
Niall O'Donoghue, Narva, Finland.