The Taoiseach is marching on with Deputy Ross's Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill in order to please him or to pay him back for making up the numbers. It is not for the work he has done or for what he has achieved as a Minister.

I welcome that more rural bus link services have been announced by Deputy Heydon. They will be a help to towns and villages at certain times. However, 38 buses will not service all of rural Ireland. I am amazed that Deputy Heydon, being from County Kildare, claims to be a rural Deputy. If I were to take him and the Minister, Deputy Ross, to rural Kerry and leave them in the Black Valley or the Pocket in Glanmore without satnav, neither would arrive in Killarney in time for their Christmas dinner. The service discussed by Deputy Heydon is only a camouflage. Members of Fine Gael are supporting the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill and sacrificing the people in rural Ireland. I ask the Government to drop the Bill because it is not rural-proofed and does not explain how those it will make more lonely and isolated will manage. The Government has no proposal to deal with that. Deputy Heydon said the Bill was to ensure that when people such as the Deputy and his wife go to Kerry, they will not get hit by a driver who has had three or four pints. I want the Deputy to withdraw that remark because no driver does that in Kerry.

Deputy Healy-Rae, please.

If that is the Deputy's reasoning for the Bill he is in the wrong box. I ask him to apologise to the people of Kerry because what he said in this Chamber is not a fact.

In the programme for Government and thereafter, promises have been made by the Government that all Bills to come before the Dáil would be rural-proofed. After listening to the contributions of several speakers from the Government side and across the floor, it is clear that no rural-proofing has been done in respect of the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill brought forward by the Minister, Deputy Ross. As I said, speaker after speaker has admitted that we need a proper rural transport service, which we do not currently have. In light of that, will the Taoiseach stand by the people of rural Ireland and ask the Minister, Deputy Ross, to withdraw the Bill until it has been properly rural-proofed?

There are many nice towns in the great county of Kildare------

Hear hear.

------but there are also large rural parts, as Deputy Danny Healy-Rae knows.

Those are not what I call rural areas.

They are not remote but parts are very rural. The legislation is before the House and it is for the House to accept, amend or refuse it. I do not agree that the Bill has not been rural-proofed. The facts indicate that the vast majority of those who die on our roads are not killed in Dublin or Cork city centres or in our towns and cities. People who die on the roads in Ireland tend to die on the roads in rural Ireland. If rural-proofing means saving the lives of people in rural Ireland, the Bill has certainly been rural-proofed.

Those deaths are due to the condition of roads in rural Ireland.

I accept there is also an issue in regard to rural isolation and the lack of good transport in rural areas and Deputy Heydon is working on that. However, it is not solely about people getting home from the pub at night but, rather, better rural transport for people doing many things other than drinking.