A provision in the magisterial inquiry reform that will give some authorities access to evidence will mean that the proposed Traffic Investigation Bureau can now be set up, the transport minister said.
"By the time the reform comes into force, we plan to present draft legislation for the setting up of the bureau to the cabinet," Chris Bonett told Times of Malta.
Parliament on Tuesday afternoon is due to start debating the contentious bill to change how magisterial inquiries function.
The bill is controversial because requests must be made to the police before eventually going to a judge if no action is taken. Only evidence that is admissible in court can be used in requests.
Among the less disputed provisions is a clause that will allow public authorities with an investigative function to have access to the evidence and testimony collected during a magisterial inquiry.
Bonett said the legal amendments would finally allow for the formation of the Traffic Investigation Bureau, a body that will be tasked with investigating the causes of serious road accidents and drawing lessons from them.
The bureau will come into being via legal notice, he said.
Plans for the bureau were first announced by then Transport Minister Aaron Farrugia in December 2022 on the back of Malta's deadliest year on record for road fatalities.
Twenty-six people died on Maltese roads in 2022, including 14 pedestrians, a man who was driving a horse-drawn carriage and eight motorcyclists.
The bureau was meant to be up and running by the end of 2023 but ran into delays because of the judiciary's hesitancy to share the contents of magisterial inquiries.
In January, Transport Minister Bonett said the ministry would be presenting its ideas for establishing a road safety bureau in the "coming weeks."
This is not the first time that the government has promised a body to investigate traffic accidents.
In 2019, the Transport Ministry announced that a commission to investigate all major land, sea and air transport accidents and make safety recommendations was planned to begin operating in 2020.
That plan never came to being.