Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the opportunity to address the Dáil and update Members on road safety and the current progress against actions within the Government's road safety strategy 2021-23. The safety of all road users is the first priority for my Department. Travel and transportation is an essential component of social and economic life in this country and needs to be available, accessible and sustainable. Above all, it needs to be safe. I am sad to say, however, that in three out of the last four years, we have experienced an increase in road-related fatalities and serious accidents. This year is likely to see that trend exacerbated. As of this morning, there have been 155 fatalities on our roads in 2023. This will bring the total to the same as that for the entirety of last year, and we have two months still to go. The winter months tend to see an increase in road deaths above those in the earlier parts of the year. Each of the fatalities represents a devastating loss for families and communities across the country, and each serious injury has life-changing consequences.

While this trend is a negative one, I think it is important to briefly outline the progress that has been made in recent decades. Our first national road safety strategy began in 1998. One year previously, in 1997, we had 472 fatalities on our roads. That was a at a time when we had a lower population and far fewer vehicles on our roads. Over the course of that first strategy and its successors, we have witnessed a remarkable improvement in safety on our roads. While the trend was not always downward, we managed to reach record low of 137 fatalities in 2018. Although we have made great strides in the past 20 years, it is clear from the current trends that we must do a lot more to restore the downward trend of deaths and serious injuries on our roads. We are working on multiple fronts to address this problem.

The four main causes of road fatalities remain speeding, intoxicated driving, non-wearing of seat belts and distracted driving, all of which come down to driver behaviour. Irish data from a range of sources, including self-report surveys, observational studies, analysis of coronial data and collision figures, show concerning levels of these dangerous driver behaviours and in some cases a deterioration of attitudes around them. High levels of mobile phone usage are being reported by drivers in Ireland. Research from 2022 indicates that approximately one in four motorists are not only checking their phones, but writing messages while driving. Drug driving is also a serious concern. Data indicate that Irish drivers arrested for drug driving are typically male and under the age of 45. Cannabis, cocaine and benzodiazepines are the most commonly detected drugs.

Speeding remains one of the greatest risk factors on our roads.

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Most people know that speeding is dangerous and, yet, all too many continue to do it. Speed reduces the time people have to react and makes collisions more likely. It also makes it more likely that when collisions do happen they lead to deaths or serious injuries.

Last month, my Department published a speed limit review. This contains a range of recommendations focused on ensuring that we have safe and appropriate speed limits on all classes of roads. Among the key recommendations are the reduction in default speed limits on certain classes of roads, specifically in urban areas, national secondary roads and rural roads. Deputies will be aware that default speed limits for different classes of roads are set in legislation, while local authorities have the power to vary the limits on specific roads through their by-laws. This is because two roads of the same class could still have very different characteristics and local authorities are best placed to determine what is appropriate for each road in light of these circumstances. The Road Traffic Measures Bill 2023, about which I will speak more in a moment, will implement the changes to default speed limits, while my officials are working on the further implementation of the other recommendations of the review. In addition, the Road Traffic and Roads Act 2023 contains a range of provisions to improve road safety, including the roll-out of variable speed limits in response to adverse conditions, the further use of cameras to support safety, and measures to reduce the number of uninsured drivers and assist An Garda Síochána in its enforcement of road traffic legislation.

Another priority is to review our national driver testing curriculum and service in order that they are fit for purpose, future-proofed and can cope with changes in vehicle technology. This evaluation will be informed by additional research that is currently under way into changing driver behaviours. International best practice and research will be considered in order to produce recommendations on improving driver education in Ireland. I am pleased to say that earlier this month my Department conveyed a sanction to the Road Safety Authority to commence this really important project.

Deputies will be aware that the Government recently approved the drafting of the Road Traffic Measures BiIl 2023. This short and focused Bill aims to address a number of important issues which will contribute to road safety. I was pleased to speak with the Oireachtas joint committee about its provisions yesterday. I am committed to putting in place the measures required to reduce the worrying trend we are currently experiencing. Given the urgency, the Bill will follow a different path to the Road Traffic and Roads Act 2023 which had more than 50 sections and took many years to complete. Instead, this will be a short and focused Bill. I intend that it will be progressed over the coming weeks helping to ensure we do not see a repeat of this year's deaths and serious accidents during 2024.

I will now outline the main issues to be addressed in the Bill. Penalty points were first introduced in Ireland under the Road Traffic Act in 2002. The goal of penalty points is to encourage safer driver behaviour and vehicle maintenance standards. As penalty points for specific offences are set out in a table in a schedule in the 2002 Act any change in points requires an amendment to this Act. This makes it difficult to respond in a timely way to changing requirements in road safety and enforcement of driving offences. By contrast, the fixed change system introduced at the same time as penalty points allowed the Minister to set the level of fixed charges in regulations. The Bill proposes moving the setting of penalty points into secondary legislation. However, colleagues should note that in order to ensure that the Houses of the Oireachtas retain a right to give input and vote on any changes to penalty points, the Bill proposes that resolutions from both Houses would be required for any change in penalty point regulations to take effect.

The 2002 Act also specifies that where a person commits more than one penalty point offence on the same occasion, they will receive only one set of penalty points, which would be the highest or joint highest. In contrast, someone who commits these offences on separate occasions received penalty points for each offence. This is a legal inequity on the basis that a driver who commits several offences at different times may attain 12 points and be disqualified where another driver who commits the same offences on the same occasion may not be disqualified. This Bill will repeal the sections causing this anomaly. Drivers will retain the right not to pay the fixed charge notice and can contest the charge in court if they wish. It is important to note also that where people commit multiple serious breaches of road traffic law on a single occasion, An Garda Síochána has the discretion to choose the most appropriate path by either issuing fixed charge notices for the individual offences or by prosecuting a person with an offence such as careless or dangerous driving, or driving a dangerously defective vehicle. Again, a driver may choose to contest any charges in court.

Data from the Road Safety Authority shows that almost half of fatalities this year occurred between Friday and Sunday. Although night time features lower traffic volumes it features a higher number of collisions. Evidence suggests that these periods present greater risks in terms of driver behaviour such as drink and drug driving and fatigue. This is particularly true on bank holiday weekends. The Bill will propose to allow for higher penalty points where we can vary the penalty points for specific periods such as bank holiday weekends. A similar system operates successfully and effectively in many parts of Australia and has been shown to have a tangible impact on driver behaviour when linked with clear communications campaigns. Under the Bill, the Minister for Transport will be empowered to set higher penalty points for periods of time such as those weekends and research indicates increasing points for specified periods is likely to have a positive impact on driver behaviour. We would of course have to accompany this change with rigorous evaluation of the impact of increased penalties and driver awareness campaigns around the specific periods.

At present, members of An Garda Síochána are required to take a breath specimen for the purposes of testing for the presence of alcohol at the scene of road traffic accidents. This is known as mandatory alcohol testing. Gardaí are not however required to conduct a drug test at the scene of a collision. Instead they have the option to do so. While gardaí sometimes do conduct such tests at the scene of collisions we are proposing to make drug testing mandatory on the same basis as alcohol testing. I hope Deputies will agree that this will further strengthen safety on our roads.

Deputies will be aware of the recently published speed limit review I mentioned earlier. The review recommends a number of changes to the speed limit framework which will require a legislative amendment. The Bill will include provisions for the implementation of key recommendations. It will amend the default speed limits for national secondary roads, local and rural roads and urban roads including in built-up areas. The default speed limit for national secondary roads will go from 100 km/h to 80 km/h, the default limit for local rural roads will reduce from 80 km/h to 60 km/h, and the default limit in built-up urban areas will come down from 50 km/h to 30 km/h. It may be of interest to Deputies that Dublin is one of the only regions not to see an increase in fatalities this year. It is also the region that has the most 30 km/h zones. The implementation of these speed limit review measures will require to be managed with local authorities for by-laws to be revised as well as for consultation in the reviews. Lowering the speed limit on all of these classes of road will have an important impact on road safety. In particular, fatality records show that rural roads are the most dangerous in the country and lowering the speed limit on these roads from 80 km/h to 60 km/h will make a real difference for the safety of all road users.

I assure the Dail that it is still the Government's goal to halve the number of road deaths and injuries by 2030 and to implement the goal of vision zero by 2050. Recent trends serve as a reminder to us all that we cannot be complacent about road safety. Reducing the number of road deaths and serious injuries will only be achieved if we all highlight the importance of road safety and promote conversations on the topic in our homes, with our families and friends and in our places of work. As individuals, we must make a commitment to use the road safely and as I said earlier the four main causes of road fatalities are speed, intoxicated driving, non-wearing of seat-belts and distracted driving. The new Bill will help encourage safer driving behaviours across all of these areas and will reform the penalty points system, and allow for the expedited response to trends on our roads as they emerge. Mandatory drug testing at the scene of collisions will ensure that all drivers involved in crashes who have illegal substances in their systems will be caught and held responsible for their actions. The implementation of key recommendations from the speed limit review will greatly increase safety on our roads and, in particular, protect vulnerable road users across the country. I acknowledge the work of the officials in my Department and in the different agencies who are delivering many of the actions in the road safety strategy and I commend the efforts to improve road safety as we approach the end of 2023.

I assure the Dáil of my personal commitment to road safety and to supporting efforts to bring about the changes needed to reduce the number of unnecessary deaths and injuries to all who use our roads in their daily lives. I look forward to hearing Deputies' contributions.

Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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It is appropriate to recognise that last night there was another tragic death in Sligo, when a man on an e-scooter was killed. That brings the number of deaths on the roads this year to 155, which is the same number that we had for the entirety of last year. This is the tragedy that keeps coming at us. Every weekend or every couple of days, we hear of more people being killed on the roads. It is a terrible tragedy for those families, and for people who are injured and for a whole community that is left to grieve afterwards.

We all recognise and understand what needs to happen. We need to have safer roads for people to travel on and we need people to travel more safely on those roads as well. This will involve a range of actions.

I appreciate that the Minister of State is bringing forward legislation. There are three aspects to that and he outlined them. Speed, the Minister of State correctly said, is recognised as one of the main contributing factors to road accidents. Often that speed is a result of intoxication. People drive too fast when they have alcohol or other substances on board. This can have detrimental consequences for them and their families. I welcome the idea of having mandatory drug testing at the scenes of accidents. Indeed, drug testing is something we need to see rolled out more across the country in general when it comes to checks that gardaí are doing at checkpoints.

We need to recognise that there are many roads on which the current speed limit of 80 km/h is far too high. That is the reality for many quite country roads. Having said that, there are stretches of those roads where it is appropriate to have it at that limit. That is where, I suppose, we need to ensure, as, in fairness, the Minister of State has acknowledged, that the local authorities will have, hopefully, in conjunction with the Garda Síochána, a substantial role in ensuring that they have got the flexibility to have an appropriate limit on the piece of road we were talking about in order that the law that we bring into force will be a law that citizens will abide by. If we bring in laws which people feel are ridiculous or inappropriate, they simply will not abide by them. That will make it more difficult for An Garda Síochána to enforce such laws.

Of course, much of what we do here will be about enforcement. Enforcement and deterrence are the big issues. The problem is that in the past number of years we have seen a significant depletion in Garda numbers across the board, but particularly in the area of roads policing. Almost one third of the gardaí who were policing our roads in the past are not there anymore. The impact of that is to be seen everywhere. It is to be seen in the number of people who are being prosecuted, the number of people who have been caught, etc. What has happened is that the gardaí who have been removed from roads policing have been replaced by GoSafe vans. While they have a role to play, they are not playing the one they should be playing. We need to see more gardaí there carrying out those efforts.

In regard to the prospect of bringing in penalty points at a higher rate for bank holiday weekends as opposed to other times, I get the logic. The Minister of State explained that clearly yesterday at the committee. I understand where he is coming from in that regard. He cited Australia, where it worked previously. However, that is one jurisdiction where we see this happening. We should be careful about that. I would be wary about the suggestion that a person who speeds or who uses the roads in an inappropriate manner and breaks the law on a Thursday or a Friday is, somehow or other, less culpable than he or she would be at weekends. That is the problem I have with it. The law should apply across the board. This is a dangerous road to go down, if the Minister of State will pardon the pun. We need to consider matters carefully before we go down that road. I appreciate that the Minister of State wants to move this at pace and introduce these measures quickly. That is fine, but we also have to be responsible and recognise that sometimes there can be unintended consequences to legislation that we bring in with too much haste. We would want to be careful that this does not happen in the context of the forthcoming Bill.

The other issue I want to raise with the Minister of State relates to the actual quality of our roads. In my constituency, we have the N17. As I am sure the Deputies all will be aware, there was a great song written about it. There is a section of the road that is very dangerous and that requires an upgrade. In the past couple of months, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, visited Sligo and told us that there would be no upgrade works done to the N17 and that the new road was not to be built. It had basically been shelved to the great disappointment not only to the people of that area but to the motoring public in general, because many people use that road and recognise how dangerous it is, and that that new road needs to be built. Government commitments in respect of roads of that nature need to be honoured. We need safe roads, because they are not only for people who travel in cars, heavy goods vehicles or, as we try to roll out more public transport, particularly in rural areas, buses, but we also need quality roads on which people can drive.

I also want to raise with the Minister of State the issue of the A5 upgrade. This road goes through the other jurisdiction, the North. There has been a commitment from Government in respect of it in the past. I would like to hear the Minister of State restate the commitment that the Government will fund that road on a 50-50 basis. Hopefully, we can move that forward. It really needs to move forward because the numbers of people that are being killed, particularly in County Tyrone but on other parts of that road, are much higher than on other sections of it. The Government commitment needs to be honoured, and we need to keep the pressure on to ensure that that new road is built.

The statistics on people losing their lives on the roads indicate that 53 out of the 155 who lost their lives so far this year were the drivers of the vehicles involved. In addition, 38 pedestrians, 32 passengers, 22 motorcyclists, five cyclists and four e-scooter riders were killed.

I presume that the statistic the Minister of State referred to in the context of people not wearing seat-belts relates, in most cases, to passengers, and usually those in the back seat. I have very seldom seen anyone getting into a car and driving without his or her seat-belt on. Nor have I seen many front-seat passengers do so. I imagine this issue relates to back-seat passengers. Perhaps the Minister of State can clarify the position. We have a culture where most people wear their seat-belts but there are a minority of individuals who possibly do not. As stated, these people may be back-seat passengers. When we look at the statistics, we can see that 32 of the 155 people killed were passengers in cars. Perhaps that is where that is coming from.

Speed is one of the key factors here, but there are other things that happen at the same time. There are people out there who, when they get behind the wheel of a car, think they are at the Monte Carlo Rally no matter where they are going. They speed. They drive erratically. They drive recklessly. We need to have measures to be able to ensure that those individuals are caught. They are in a minority. There are many people out there who abide by the rules of the road, who travel at appropriate speeds and who monitor weather conditions. They do everything properly but there are a minority who do not. We need to have proper mechanisms in place to ensure that those people are caught and that they are properly dealt with.

That brings me back to penalty points and the adequate fines that can be put in place. The existing system of fines is the same across the board. Someone pointed out to me that if a celebrity who has a big fast car gets caught speeding, the fine will not matter to him or her because he or she has the money to pay it. For many other people, the fine is an issue because money is a big issue in their lives and they do not have spare cash to be paying fines for speeding or for any other traffic offences. In other jurisdictions, the fines imposed relate to the person's income. That is something which could be considered. I ask the Minister of State whether he has considered this as a possibility.

The Minister of State mentioned the use of mobile phones. I spoke to someone last week who regularly drives a van in which the driver's seat is quite high up. Often this person would glance down when passing cars. This man told me that on his way to Dublin a couple of weeks ago he counted five people who were driving with their knees on the steering wheel as they were text messaging. I do not know how we can deal with that. How can anyone stop people from doing that? How can we monitor them? We do not have technology to be able to do that. It is down to the person involved having enough cop-on to realise that what he or she is doing is extremely dangerous, both for himself or herself and for others. A person may have hands-free and answer a phone, and speak on it while he or she is driving. That is one thing, but to be trying to text while driving is beyond belief. According to the man in question, it is not only the odd person who is doing it; it is something that he sees on a regular basis.

We need to have a suite of measures to be able to deal with road safety. Some of the measures the Minister of State is bringing in are appropriate and need to happen. We need to be looking at other measures. We need to look at the use of technology more. We need to look at the static cameras. The Minister of State mentioned that. Possibly, we need to be looking at speed-limiters in cars. We need to be looking at ways in which we can deter people from abusing the rules of the road and make sure that there are adequate sanctions in place when they do that, but we also need to educate people and train young drivers better when it comes to using the roads, particularly motorways.

What the Minister of State is trying to do is laudable. We support it and want it to happen, but we do not want to see stuff brought in that we will later regret and that will have unintended consequences. This is why it is very appropriate that we have a full and comprehensive debate on all of these issues.

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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We all know the seriousness of the accidents with which we have been dealing lately and the tragedies for the families involved. On the M1, which is close to where I live, we lost Chris Bradley and Wayne Lynch. In August, a young man who was originally from Algeria lost his life on an e-scooter. I do not think there is anyone who does not realise the importance of the issue with which we are dealing.

I am very glad we are looking at a review of speed limits across the board. This needs to happen. In my county, you deal with the estates first and then it is really a case of assisting those people who may be in contact about an issue, such as, for example, an ongoing review. We had the county road review. The people who have come to me or other elected representatives made their submissions. What always happens is that, two weeks later, somebody asks why the speed limit in his or her estate or on his or her road is X, Y or Z. We need to improve that.

Another thing that can be the bane of many elected representatives' lives is the idea of having a really consistent process on road safety and traffic calming, particularly when you are talking about the likes of ramps, because how it is done changes from county to county. We need consistent rules and a process whereby someone knows the criteria that need to be met and that can be looked at. While I accept that there will always be an application process to central Government for particular funding streams, we definitely can do better.

I received a reply to a parliamentary question to the effect that decisions like this are to be prioritised by county councils, which apply for funding and make determinations. My query relates to Mullatee in Carlingford, where a number of incredibly serious accidents have occurred. On 12 March, a vehicle left the road resulting in the death of a male. On 26 May, a female driver also lost control sustaining head and internal injuries. On 16 September, another male driver left the road and suffered head injuries. It is a stretch of road that obviously needs to be looked at but in addition to that, there is a house at this point. There has been a refusal to date by the council to put some protective solution in place. There has been upwards of €15,000 of damage to the house so this issue needs to be looked at.

We know the issues relating to schools. The Minister of State would have seen the case of Bellurgan National School, regarding which a proposal is in place, and Bush Post-Primary School. There needs to be a review of the entire road in the area. I have spoken to the Minister previously about this matter. I tend to be inundated when I talk about Kilcurry National School. There have been some solutions, but there is a particular issue with a crossroads not far from it that is in bad shape. Shelagh National School in north Louth is another case. I get that schools were built at different times and that roads were slightly different. A process for people to deliver solutions that will suit parents, children and everybody else does not exist. We need a more holistic solution.

A number of hauliers have contacted us. We all know that farmers need to have access to land, but some of what has been relayed to use relates to lighting. Some of it may relate to vehicles, but I spoke previously about the M1 and literally putting lights off and reducing the number of lights in certain areas. The answers people received were to the effect that it related to the carbon footprint of the company involved. If that affects safety, it is not acceptable. I will follow up with the Minister of State on those issues.

Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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We know that, regrettably, lamentably and tragically we are going backwards in terms of road safety and road deaths. We saw 25 road deaths in August alone. We nearly had one death every day during what should be one of the safer months. As of Tuesday last, 24 October, we have seen an increase of 36 in the number of road deaths as compared with the corresponding date in 2022. We have also seen 31 more collisions in this timeframe according to An Garda Síochána.

In May, I called on the Road Safety Authority, RSA, to be mandated to publish data on road traffic collisions in order to better inform Ireland’s transport strategy and, ultimately, protect drivers and pedestrians and save lives. The worrying statistics we have seen with regard to the continuing increase in the number of road deaths is further proof that, among other things, we need to see this data published on a regular basis.

Can the Minister of State explain why he delayed reducing the timeframe for developing detailed guidance for local authorities, which he stated in August could be reduced from one year to around three months? We know from the RSA that research indicates there was a significant change in drivers’ attitudes and behaviours during the Covid-19 pandemic, so why, when we saw this change revert, did the Minister not take action to speed up the process? The Minister for Justice spoke last week about how a change in driver behaviour is the reason for a significant drop in the detection of road traffic offences. Does the Minister have any data to back this statement up as I suspect this decrease may be due to a number of different factors, including but not limited to, fewer gardaí assigned to roads policing units and the aforementioned changes in driver behaviour during the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw fewer cars and more gardaí on the roads? The Minister for Justice acknowledged that there has been a reduction in detections of road traffic offences in recent years.

I acknowledge the Minister of State's creative measures to tackle speeding through the doubling of penalty points on bank holidays. I can see he is making efforts and striving to do what he can to improve road safety given the current regulatory and legislative framework. I believe there is increased momentum and we are seeing that in discussions at the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications and in this Chamber. I welcome that but we need to see that pushed through.

There are other aspects of this matter that require further action. Waiting lists for driving tests are too long, a matter we discussed extensively at the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications. As shown by a report in The Irish Timesearlier this month, a staggering number of people in this country are driving around on provisional licences and have never taken the driving test. Some of them may have no intention of driving or may be sitting on waiting lists, but we need to ensure those waiting lists are reduced and that more people are taking and passing the test and being accredited as safe drivers.

Another way of reducing the number of road deaths would be by expanding and improving our public transport services nationwide. With the population increase allied with our lack of public transport options, particularly in rural and some commuter areas, too many people in Ireland are getting into their cars, which is leading to greater numbers of cars on the roads. This increases the likelihood of accidents. In some areas, we have links but they are not being delivered. In Ratoath, County Meath, I work with our local area representative Eilish Balfe with regard to a number of problematic routes where there are frequent cancellations of much-needed bus services while people are waiting at the stops. On Monday, 2 October, eight No. 103 services were cancelled, all of them at peak times. On 7 May, 11 services were cancelled. On 23 October, 18 were cancelled. This is an astounding number of cancellations at peak times - during the school term as well. Ratoath is not in my constituency or that of the Minister of State, but it is adjacent to both. We know how big Ratoath has become and how many people there have to commute daily for work or college in Dublin, so these buses are vitally important. If these buses do not turn up, the only choice people in Ratoath have is to resort to using their cars.

That is something we cannot have. People are missing medical appointments and being disciplined at work. We also need to look at the easy wins and low-hanging fruit in improving road safety. I have been working with our local representative in Cork, Peter Horgan, who has been highlighting to the local council issues like the pedestrian crossing at Broadale and across the slip road in that area. These are simple low-cost wins that would make things safer for pedestrians.

Just yesterday, data were released showing we have the highest number of pedestrians being killed or injured on our roads that we have had for a very long time. We need to arrest these trends in respect of road deaths and accidents. There are ways of doing that. I acknowledge that the Minister of State is taking the lead on this and that he is adopting a multifaceted approach involving investment through local authorities, education, awareness programmes, encouraging better driver practices and Garda enforcement. I ask the Minister of State to continue with that energy and to work with the relevant line Ministers across those agencies and Departments to move this forward. We cannot go back. We were making progress in this area and the trends were going in the right direction but, as we know, every death and serious injury is a tragedy. All of us in this country have been touched by road deaths, either directly or indirectly. We need to get those trends going back in the right direction. We will work with the Minister of State to achieve that but we need more energy and more investment.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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The last time I was knocked down, I was dressed as Big Bird. I do not quite mean that literally but I am 6 ft 1 in. and I was dressed from head to toe in bright yellow. I was going through a roundabout when a driver came in, ploughed into the side of me and I went out over the bonnet. I received the SIDNY apology, that is, "Sorry, I didn't notice you." It therefore does not necessarily matter how much hi-vis you are wearing. The last time my children were nearly knocked down, it was while crossing at a signalled pedestrian crossing while the driver accelerated through. This was in broad daylight while they were on their way to school, which is a critical time for vulnerable road users. The fact of the matter is that it does not matter how much high-visibility gear you are wearing. If the driver is not looking, he or she will not see you. For a vulnerable road user such as a cyclist, a pedestrian or a child walking to school, these are not trivial incidents because we are not encased in a tonne of steel that will protect us from an impact.

National Child Safety Day was 6 October. On that day, the Road Safety Authority, RSA, distributed more than 40,000 high-visibility vests to preschools all over the country. I do not know many preschoolers who walk unaccompanied on country roads at night so I do not know what earthly difference a high-visibility vest will make to them. On the same day, the RSA released its child casualties report, outlining the number of children killed or seriously injured on our roads over the past eight years. If you are a parent, the numbers are, quite frankly, frightening. A total of 56 children aged 15 years or younger were killed while a shocking 852 were seriously injured on our roads and streets, with two out of three of those kids harmed on urban roads.

How we report and what we report makes a big difference in framing the debate on this issue. From that report, we learned whether these children were walking, cycling or crossing the road when they were harmed. We also learned the age range and gender of the children harmed. I am fairly sure these were traffic collisions so I am not quite sure what difference it makes whether a child is a boy or a girl or what bearing that has on the incident. What the report does not tell us and what we do not learn is anything about the cause of the collision or incident. We do not get anything on driver behaviour or what was recorded as the cause of the incident. What message is sent out by a report that focuses solely on the victims of driver behaviour without collecting any data on the drivers or their behaviour, a report from a body that is also distributing 40,000 hi-vis vests? The message we are sending out is that walking and cycling are dangerous activities and that people should not engage in them unless wearing specialised equipment. That is not the road or street I want for myself or for my children.

We have to be clear that walking, cycling or crossing the road to get to school or to the shops is normal behaviour and should not result in children being killed, maimed or ending up in hospital. When I send my oldest child out the door, I send him off by himself. I let him make his own way across to school. He is a sensible enough young fella so off he goes on his bike. I do not worry about his behaviour. I am not worried that he will do something. I am worried about cars. If he slips off his bike and has a bang, that is part of growing up and I am happy enough to put up with that. However, what I worry about is driver behaviour. We need to allow for human behaviour. I understand what Deputy Kenny was talking about with regard to road design but we have to engineer within those designs. I absolutely hear what he says about how we can get drivers to behave and to adhere to lower speed limits but we have to engineer that in. It is about road legibility. It is not just about education and telling people to wear their helmets and hi-vis and not to cross between cars. That is part of the mix and is also important but we have to engineer a situation whereby the streets are safe for those using them.

I will talk about some of the reporting. One of the RSA's clear responsibilities, which is indicated on its own website, is to "Report official statistics on fatal and injury collisions that have occurred on public roads in line with our statutory remit". We are getting reports with a significant focus on the victims of road traffic incidents and not enough focus on the cause of those incidents. We also have road safety auditors and practitioners in local and State agencies tasked with road safety who do not have access to historical collision data. We hear from the RSA that there might be a general data protection regulation, GDPR, issue involved. I know the Minister of State has been in contact with the Data Protection Commissioner with a view to resolving that issue but we have to ensure the practitioners who are tasked with assessing safety on our roads have access to anonymised, comprehensive and up-to-date data such as are available in other jurisdictions. Unless we understand the root causes of the collisions taking place on our roads and while we engage in victim blaming and telling people these are unsafe activities and they should dress up in something funny, we are not going to tackle the root causes of road safety issues on our roads.

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for being here today and for his unstinting commitment to making our roads safer. As he pointed out in his opening statement, we are in a crisis. That is the only way of describing it. In three out of the past four years, we have gone backwards. There have been 155 deaths this year and recent RSA statistics tell us that, in the past seven years, 1,600 cyclists have been seriously injured on our roads. We are experiencing a litany of death and disability and it is no longer acceptable to propose a piecemeal response, although I am not suggesting that is what the Minister of State is doing. We need an overarching road safety strategy that we can collectively advocate for and work towards and which will solve this problem once and for all. It is a problem that can be solved. It is not intractable. Vision Zero is not some pie-in-the-sky ambition. It can be achieved and it should be achieved.

We really need to look at the Road Safety Authority, its functions, its obligations and the sorts of legislative powers and resources that are available to it to do its job properly. I really wonder whether it is time to stand down the Road Safety Authority. Alternatively, it may be time to give it legislative powers and a greater impact by creating the office of road safety commissioner. That is what we need right now. In doing his job, the Minister of State is engaging with the Road Safety Authority, An Garda Síochána, two Departments, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, local authorities and a plethora of different bodies, all of which have road safety functions somewhere within their remit. However, it is obviously not working because there is no overarching individual or office with the legislative power and resources to pull all of these disparate strands together to make our roads safer for each and every individual who uses them. If the RSA is to morph into this office, that is great. If it requires completely standing down the RSA and starting all over again, that is equally great. Whatever is needed, it needs to happen now.

That commissioner should have absolute independence and have powers underpinned by legislation to gather data across a number of sources, as outlined by my colleague, so that we know exactly why people are losing their lives on our roads every day. He or she needs to have the powers to question the performance of An Garda, us as Members of the Oireachtas, local government, and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, with regard to our responsibility to ensure our roads are safe places to be. It needs to be able to research, carry out analysis of road safety programmes in other jurisdictions - road safety initiatives that actually work - and have the powers to have those initiatives introduced here with the minimum of delay. That is, frankly, what needs to happen.

We appoint commissioners to other sectors in Irish life. We have, quite rightly, appointed a commissioner for mental health, a Data Protection Commissioner, and numerous others I cannot recall right now. We appoint and establish them because we identify a very critical shortcoming in how we govern our nation, and it needs somebody with the powers and the singular focus of doing a particular job and getting that job done properly. Road safety in Ireland needs that initiative right now.

I have one and a half minutes speaking time left and I could talk for an hour and a half on this topic.

With respect to An Garda, which would also come under scrutiny from the commissioner, it needs to have a serious moment of self-reflection over the next couple of weeks and to really begin to question the culture that exists within an organisation that has a significant road safety remit itself. We need to see far greater enforcement of our current road safety laws, and if that is the case and if the Garda needs more resources to do that, let us give it those resources right now. An Garda needs to make far greater use of technology and to look beyond these shores to see what is happening in other jurisdictions, and which is happening very quickly and with a great degree of effectiveness in assisting police forces in other jurisdictions, to assist us in monitoring our roads with regard to road safety.

An Garda needs to be able to support and encourage, not dissuade, vulnerable road users to report dangerous driving. An Garda needs to be able to take a case against a driver who has been engaged in such dangerous driving and it needs to be able to use technology.

We turned on two red-light breaking detection cameras - I do not know what the technical term for them is - in Dublin city a couple of years ago. We turned them on for a few weeks in two locations in the city. They detected 1,700 motorists breaking red lights in those two locations. What did we do? We turned them off because we could not possibly be infringing the rights of motorists to break red lights by actually identifying who they were and issuing them with the correct penalties. Rather than rolling that out across this city and across other cities, we turned them off.

Anybody who cycles in Dublin city knows that a bus lane is an inherently dangerous place to be. I try to avoid them if at all possible. Why? First, you encounter buses, and we have seen some recent evidence that that is not exactly a safe thing to do. Second, you have to do battle with all of the motorists who believe the bus lane is an opportunity to catch up on other traffic that has just passed them.

I could go on but I will finish on this.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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We are way over time, Deputy.

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I will finish on this and I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for her support. I am working with a community in a small village in south Galway called Kilcolgan. This is essentially a village divided by a national secondary route. TII, incidentally, should also reflect on its role in road safety. I asked our local roads engineer to consider the installation of a pedestrian crossing in a village that has approximately 1,000 people living in it, where it is not safe to cross over and back on the road that divides their village. This is the response I got. I will finish with this and not say another word. I was advised in the correspondence that a TII document, Pedestrian Crossing - Specification and Guidance, makes the following important point:

The provision of a controlled crossing will not necessarily reduce collisions and may even lead to an increase in collisions. Where a controlled crossing is present some pedestrians assume that the appearance of the green man display, or the act of stepping onto a zebra crossing, gives an assured safe crossing opportunity and do not keep alert for approaching vehicles.

That is the culture we need to eliminate, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and we need to do it very soon or this carnage will continue.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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The Deputy will have to do that in a different time.

Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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In the time available to me I would like to raise two issues that are particularly important to my constituency of Limerick, namely, the delays in completing the Coonagh to Knockalisheen road and the ongoing scourge of scrambler misuse in urban areas.

The Coonagh to Knockalisheen road is a vital project and piece of infrastructure and, when completed, will service the community of Limerick’s north side, especially the Moyross area. Moyross is an area that, despite making incredible strides over the past 15 years, remains lacking in employment opportunities and connectivity to centres of employment. It is outrageous this project still has not been completed. The project has been in play for more than a decade. It took a long and very hard-fought campaign championed by the local residents of Moyross to get the Minister to take action and approve construction, which he finally did in 2021. Without the commitment and resilience of these residents, I have no doubt that construction would not have commenced. They faced great resistance from the Minister for Transport at the time, who blocked the delivery of this vital piece of infrastructure which, as I have said, will be a key part of the Limerick regeneration programme. Unfortunately, the contractor subsequently entered receivership 18 months ago and construction was halted. Virtually nothing has been done since. This morning we got confirmation that the Department of Transport has issued approval to progress the Coonagh to Knockalisheen distributor road to tender stage, which is very welcome.

Why does everything take so long? As the parish priest of Moyross said recently, why does everything for Moyross have to be a battle? In September last year, Limerick City and County Council advised that tender documents had been prepared and that a new contractor was expected to be on site by the middle of 2023. That timeline, like all timelines relating to this project, was missed. I was advised that a tender is with the Department of Transport and yet there has been no communication until this morning as to who the new contractor is and when works will commence. I wrote to the Minister a month ago about this very matter and I still have not received a reply.

It is extremely disappointing that the community in Moyross have yet to see this vital infrastructure completed and that this project seems to be of no interest to the Minister, and I have said this to him repeatedly. He must be consistently dragged and kicked on this issue. Any further delays will just add unnecessary costs and have the potential to undo the good work that has been completed in the north side communities to date. These communities deserve more than this. I hope today’s announcement from the Department of Transport of approval to progress the Coonagh to Knockalisheen distributor road project to tender stage will see this project delivered on or before time. People across the north side have waited too long.

I have said many times before that this is more than just a road and is a crucial piece of infrastructure in the north side of the city. We cannot allow this to remain the road to nowhere. We cannot allow a community that has campaigned so hard, that has been resolute in the face of many challenges, to be let down once more. The road simply must be completed as quickly as possible. The contractor needs to be announced as soon as possible and the works need to recommence as a matter of priority. The delays and lack of communication until today on this are contemptible. People deserve to know when the project will finish and they have waited more than a decade, as I have said earlier.

As I do not have much remaining speaking time, it is nonetheless important I raise the issue of scramblers. They have become a plague in many parts of Limerick, especially urban areas. They are being misused, driven in a reckless manner, and have become a real menace to pedestrians and road users alike. The use of balaclavas and other face coverings adds to the intimidatory presence that scramblers pose. It is perhaps the most visible antisocial behaviour issue in Limerick at present. The drivers of these scramblers are reckless, dangerous and a menace to the people of Limerick.

In 2020, I and fellow Sinn Féin Deputies, Paul Donnelly and Dessie Ellis, brought forward a motion aimed at addressing the misuse of scramblers in urban areas. Subsequently, the Government brought forward its own legislation and it was very welcome. The new powers were used very successfully earlier this week in Limerick for what I believe to be the first time. In the course of a targeted operation into criminality, the gardaí in Limerick seized, among other things, 44 scrambler or off-road vehicles. This is very welcome. These vehicles, along with e-scooters, have become the go-to vehicle for many drug dealers to distribute their wares.

I commend the Garda in Limerick on this significant action against the misuse of scramblers and I look forward to seeing these powers used more regularly as part of an overarching response to antisocial behaviour in Limerick. This operation will be welcomed by people in Limerick, particularly those in urban estates who have faced the brunt of the associated antisocial behaviour that seems to accompany the misuse of these vehicles. What this seizure further shows is that, with the right resources and support, An Garda can make a significant impact in battling this scourge.

I also understand that some sections of that Bill have not been enacted and that the full powers have not been provided yet. We need to get that done as soon as possible. Statistics From the RSA show that 48% of incidents involving death and injury on scramblers involve people under the age of 18 years. Scrambler misuse is finally being tackled with the urgency required and I have no doubt these Garda interventions will save the lives of innocent road users and pedestrians.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and it is obviously a follow-on from a debate last week with regard to driver testing times.

I mentioned in that debate that it is the clearest way of showing that people have earned the competency to drive on the road safely. However, we also have to be acutely aware that drivers are not the only road users. Obviously, there are pedestrians, recreational walkers and people on bikes. Increasingly we are seeing e-scooters, e-bikes, cargo bikes and everything in between, including buses and light rail. Figures published by An Garda Síochána on Tuesday indicate that, to date this year, 154 people have been killed on the roads. That is obviously part of the reason we are discussing this today. The trend, as the Minister of State knows, is going in the wrong direction. If we take the year-on-year figures for deaths for this point in the year, it is up 36 additional deaths over 2020 and 42 over the next truly comparable year, which is 2019.

The announcement by the Minister for Justice of an additional €1.2 million to An Garda Síochána earlier this year for mobile safety camera deployments and road monitoring hours for the duration of 2023, while it is welcome, is no panacea and should not be projected as such. This has to be targeted. It strikes me at times that the GoSafe plan on the M50 is not really detecting what it should. It is certainly detecting people who are speeding but it is not in an area in which we are seeing significant road deaths. The arguments that are made for segregated roads are that they are safer. That is where we are most likely to see these cameras. If we start looking at where the fatalities are happening, very often they are happening in areas in which it would not be safe to put one of these vehicles on the side of the road.

The number of dedicated road police members in the policing unit was 659 nationally as of August this year. County Kildare, for example, which has two of the State's busiest motorways, has 26 officers. I recall a county engineer in County Kildare doing an analysis of the traffic through Kildare. A total of 80% of all the traffic coming from or going to Dublin comes through Kildare because the M4, M7 and M9 account for so much of the national traffic. If we are looking at just 26 officers working 24-7, it gives some indication of the adequacy.

I remember once doing a study that looked at all the hot spots at which fines where applied. In fact, the area in which a person was most likely to get fined for speeding was between the Red Cow roundabout and the Kildare county boundary, which is a three-lane segregated road with quite a decent road safety profile. We must look at the evidence. Unfortunately, it is to be noted that those statistics to which I referred show that 85 drivers and passengers have been killed in just over ten months this year. Worryingly, 38 pedestrians have been killed. Aside from the road deaths, there is obviously huge emotional damage for their families that will last their lives. There are also very significant injuries, however. We can see that in rehabilitation units in hospitals and the central rehabilitation unit.

I will come back to the earlier point of road users. The latest figures do not reflect the totality of the issue. In July, I asked the Minister to provide figures for traffic collisions that were logged on the PULSE system as "fatal" or "serious" relating to users of e-bikes and e-scooters, for example. There were 54 persons in that category that covered the period 2022 to the end of June 2023. Increasingly, we are also seeing a different kind of injury with vehicles like e-scooters. There have not been any adequate road safety initiatives or even a campaign to try to alert people to what to watch out for or how to use the road safely with different vehicles, or these new vehicles at least.

The focus on road safety must include all road users' behaviour, including motor vehicle drivers' behaviour, and a general awareness by all. Obviously, at schools level, there are a number of initiatives, such as Be Safe in primary school and Let’s Go at primary and second level. The latter, however, is designed for teachers - it is not actually for pupils - for events that would be held in which children take part. I know this week from talking to parents that senior infants in some schools are taking part in An Taisce’s green schools travel flag programme with the emphasis on giving kids a fun 50-minute session on scooter safety and skills. That kind of thing is a very good initiative. We want to see more of that at a very early stage. Moving on, there could be scope for a full-time model during transition year at second level for students who at some point will be commuting and which would cover all modes of transport.

Of course, I welcome the emphasis emerging with regard to prioritising active travel.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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I thank the Deputy.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I am sorry; I did not know I was over time.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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I know, it is very difficult with the clock not working.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I will finish up by saying that we must get away from the notion that we have to move cars and towards the notion that we have to move people. Public transport plays a very big part in this, but it is very fragmented. It does play a part in terms of road safety.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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I thank the Deputy very much.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Finally, we can see a noticeable change from automated crossings for schools as opposed to school wardens. Has there been a road safety assessment that indicates that is the best way? I want to see the evidence.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Go raibh maith agat. We are way over time.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Okay.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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I have the stopwatch on. Unfortunately, the clock is not working. I will go back to the Government now. An Teachta Leddin has six minutes. I am keeping an eye on the time.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Go raibh maith agat. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle might give me an indication when there is one minute remaining.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I note the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, had to leave and that the Minister, Deputy Ryan, is coming later, but I welcome the opportunity to speak to a Government colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, on this. It is important the three parties in Government are thinking the same way with respect to road safety.

The Minister of State, Deputy Richmond's, party colleague a few moments ago alluded to the disappointment of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle that he went way over time, but it was a very well-intentioned and powerful speech that Deputy Cannon gave. Deputy Cannon is a very determined campaigner when it comes to road safety, and he should be listened to. The pertinent question he asked was whether the Road Safety Authority should be stood down. That is a big question for this Government and Oireachtas. I do not believe he is asking that question lightly, however. He is asking it in the context of a very steep reversal in safety on our roads in recent months. It is an appropriate question to ask, and he certainly has strong views on it, and I do too. I believe the Road Safety Authority is in many respects barking up the wrong tree when it comes to road safety. It is looking at some things that are not effective and not looking at other issues it should be.

Deputy Ó Cathasaigh mentioned the emphasis by the Road Safety Authority on the role of vulnerable road users in protecting themselves and the hi-vis argument, about which he made a strong point. The RSA put so much effort, energy and money into promoting hi-vis, but where is its ambition around enforcement for those who break red lights? Where is the Road Safety Authority's ambition or analysis around the trend in sales of heavy and large vehicles? We all know from all international research that these vehicles are having an impact on road safety. Deputy Cannon is absolutely correct to ask this question. That is the debate we should be having. Is our Road Safety Authority fit for purpose in this day and age?

3 o’clock

With regard to the red-light breaking, it is an enforcement issue. It is very much with the Department of Justice, not the Department of Transport. Collectively, we have to acknowledge that this is a critical issue for this Government to deal with. We have not been dealing with it fast enough. The Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, said earlier that enforcement is there for the small cohort of people who will never obey the rules. When it comes to red-light breaking, at every change of the lights and every junction in every town and city in this country, two, three or four cars will race through. These are not the misdemeanours that are directly leading to injuries and fatalities. They are the misdemeanours that are leading to a culture of poor motorist behaviour on our roads, which in turn leads to speeding, which leads to other bad behaviours such as drink and drug taking and mobile phone use while driving. If we are not addressing the culture at the root cause, there really has to be a zero-tolerance approach to the regulation of heavy machines that travel at speed, which have the potential to maim and kill. That is what they are doing.

I do not believe the RSA. Notwithstanding the fact that it has enforcement through technology on its agenda and in the road safety strategy, I do not see the urgency. Frankly, I do not see the urgency from the Government on the matter. We should have cameras at junctions and on buses as other jurisdictions do, which record poor behaviour by motorists. We should have cameras on bus lanes. We should also have a portal to which citizens can upload videos of bad behaviour. All of these things are critically important, yet they are seemingly not urgent matters for the RSA.

There is a critical issue with regard to the trend in sales of bigger and heavier vehicles, notwithstanding that many of them are electric. Just because they are electric vehicles and tick the climate box does not mean electric vehicles should be ignored when it comes to road safety. Bigger and heavier vehicles are more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists on our roads. Just because they are electric vehicles does not mean they get a free pass.

I will conclude by paying tribute to the late Mr. Bob Hannan, the senior architect in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, who had a stellar career in his role but who more recently designed the coastal mobility route between Dún Laoghaire and Blackrock. That is a critical measure that is bringing safety to the people of Dún Laoghaire and Blackrock. Children can now cycle to school, and the elderly can cycle to the shops and to church. It is appropriate that Mr. Hannan's legacy is noted in this House.

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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We have all been shocked by the recent loss of lives on our roads. I want to express my condolences to the families around the country and in my own county of Carlow for the loss of their loved ones this year. There really has been a worrying increase in road fatalities this year, after many years of progress in making our roads safer.

I welcome the review of speed limits around the country, which may see recommendations to lower speed limits in dangerous areas. I know we all see this in our daily lives when we go on the road, particularly if we are on a dual carriageway. We all have to be very mindful. When we are talking about these speed limits and reducing them, which is welcome, who will enforce them and what is the timescale?

While roadside testing is an operational matter for An Garda Síochána, we must all work together to focus on high-risk behaviour, with the key objective of reducing the number of serious injuries, collisions and fatalities on our roads. There have been numerous changes to legislation governing driving under the influence in recent years, which have increased the penalties and lowered the limits for driving under the influence. However, we must do more in our education and enforcement campaigns into the future to raise awareness and further decrease driving under the influence of alcohol or any other substance.

Road traffic legislation is enforced as part of the day-to-day duties of all members of An Garda Síochána. I know that funding of €2.3 billion was allocated to them in the budget this year but we have to increase its resources. Two stations in Carlow - Tullow and Bagenalstown - do not operate on a 24-hour basis. They need Garda numbers sufficient to operate as a 24-hour station. I am still waiting on the one in Leighlinbridge to be reopened. Again, there is no community crime prevention officer in Carlow. These are measures that need to be looked at. It would mean that additional gardaí would become available to be deployed to priority areas. They are all great for the work they do. However, roads policing really needs to be addressed. I know that the first thing I will hear back is, "Well, that is not within our remit", but I believe it is. We need to put more money into our gardaí. We need to have gardaí more visible, particularly on our roads when we see these accidents happening.

Other speakers have spoken about flash flooding. I have seen it in the last few months when we have had so much rain due to climate change. Even now on our roads, flash flooding is going to become a very serious issue and will play a huge part in accidents if we do not do something about it.

Again in my own area, I see e-scooters on roads and footpaths in town centres. It is becoming a huge issue, and we have had some fatalities with regard to this.

While I am really delighted that Carlow is a university town, that brings its challenges. It is great to see us being a university town and county but if one has schools near a university, which we have, particularly a primary school, that needs to be accompanied by funding for primary children going into schools. There are issues now because of all the extra traffic that is coming into town. Again, I call for urgent funding for our southern relief road. While Carlow town is doing really well and it is great to see it, we need to invest in the southern relief road. I know it is on the capital plan but we need to get that done as urgently as possible.

There is another area that comes across as well, and I find it hard to believe that we cannot get any funding for it. I am glad that the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is coming into the Chamber shortly. We see in Carlow and in government that everyone is promoting car-pooling as a climate change measure. We are saying "do not have too many cars on the road" and "we all need to work together". When I am coming to Dublin every day, just before I swing off to go on the main Dublin road as I leave Carlow, I could meet 20 cars on the side of the road barely pulled in. We cannot get money to develop a proper place where those people could park their cars. We cannot get money because the Government is telling me there is no money for it. We need to look at the things that can enable road safety. We are encouraging car pooling and encouraging people to travel together, yet when one applies for funding under the Government grants, one cannot get any funding for that.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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I thank the Deputy.

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I have so much more to say. Am I finished already?

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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The Deputy may have a little extra time.

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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It is important that we get all of these issues sorted, including driving licences and people waiting on their driving test, which is another huge issue.

Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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Road safety is a massive issue for everyone. The recent statistics on recent road deaths are absolutely frightening. In my constituency there are high-performance cars at the M3 garage in Hollywoodrath. I sympathise with those who want to show off their cars. They have taxed and insured them and they spend a lot of time and energy on them, but they are let down by idiots who drive their cars in an extremely dangerous way up and down our roads and use them as race tracks. I have met with the gardaí and I sympathise with them in trying to deal with this. We certainly need a strategy to deal with it before someone is hurt or killed.

I want to praise the gardaí in respect of the operation in Limerick regarding the scrambler issue and the seizure of more than 40 scramblers and quads. In my constituency of Dublin West we are scourged by scramblers and quads being driven dangerously on our roads and in our parks. I would love to see a similar operation being put in place in Dublin West. Some parts of the legislation have not been put in place and need to be tested. We need to do that as quickly as possible.

I recently visited Utrecht and Zwolle in Holland as part of the active travel initiative. I found it extremely interesting. What really struck me about the active travel arrangements there, particularly with regard to safe cycling and the safety of pedestrians, was how people respect each other - drivers respect cyclists, cyclists respect pedestrians - and obey the rules of the road. They do so because the rules are enforced. There is a strict rule of not breaking red lights and not putting anybody else in danger, or else there will be consequences for it. As a driver for 30 years and a recent commuter cyclist in the past five months, I can honestly say that cycling enforcement is extremely limited here. I have often travelled across the country without seeing a garda. It also struck me that the Dutch infrastructure is well thought-out. However, it has taken them 40 years to get to where they are - 40 years of planning, winning people over, engaging with people and ensuring they have buy-in. Another thing that struck me when I was cycling with a group from Fingal County Council, including councillors and other people involved in active travel, was that I saw very few people wearing helmets or high-vis jackets. They do not feel the need to do so because it is safe there and people feel safe there. I know from cycling in Dublin for the past four or five months that it is not a safe place to be.

Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance)
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There has been an alarming increase in road fatalities. Compared with the figures in 2019, there are now 50% more fatalities, which is staggering because in Ireland we had a good campaign of awareness around road deaths. The figure had been going down significantly over the previous ten to 15 years, but that is not the case now. Obviously, there is a range of factors contributing to why this is happening. As one of the busiest bank holiday weekends of the year approaches, we hope that everybody who travels throughout the country on bicycles or on public transport will come back safely. However, there is a chance somebody will not. Hopefully that does not happen but the trend at this time is that people are dying on our roads every week. A campaign would be warranted in relation to road safety awareness. We all remember the very hard hitting-advertising about speeding. The advertisements were emotive, but they got the message across to motorists, pedestrians and cyclists that people can die through reckless behaviour. We need to look at more advertising and more awareness. That should apply to everybody who uses the road.

I will talk about cyclists and pedestrians. I do not use a car. I cycle in here most of the time. Things have improved over the last number of years but it is still risky to cycle in the city centre. Infrastructure has been put in place but it could be much better. Over 30% of those who die on the roads are pedestrians and cyclists. It is incredible that such a figure exists. It needs to be looked at. Why is that happening? Each case is probably different but we need to bring the figure down significantly because in some situations people are just walking and are hit by a car, badly injured or sometimes killed. We have to find the reason that is happening. The fact is that the figure is at a 15-year high. There should be a cycling etiquette. Some cyclists do not adhere to the rules of the road at all. I will not mention who they are. However, some of their behaviour is quite reckless. If a cyclist hits a car, the cyclist will come off worse than the motorist. It is important that cyclists are aware of their own situation in relation to their safety.

The city centre, and the spokes coming out of the city centre, are getting better when it comes to cycling infrastructure. Segregated cycling lanes are important to take cyclists away from traffic. There are bottlenecks in the city centre that are extremely dangerous. One takes one's life in one's hands when cycling in certain parts of Dublin. There should be a campaign in regard to cycling safety and pedestrian safety to urge everybody to respect each other on the roads. There are more cars than ever on our roads, more pedestrians and more cyclists. It is great that people are cycling to work. Agriculture House has hundreds of bicycles outside. People are cycling to work but they want to feel safe. Putting in the infrastructure and having public transport alternatives to the car is important. The main thing is that we respect each other. There is a huge issue around campaigning about safety for everybody, regardless of what mode of transport they use on our roads.

Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Over recent weeks and months, people have quite rightly been concerned about road deaths.

As I stand, I think of the many great friends of mine who passed away through road traffic accidents over the last number of years, and of their families. I think of the everlasting impact a road death can have on a family and on a community. We should be mindful of them and those who are left behind, as well as those who are involved in the accidents. We should be very mindful of the tragedies out there.

Looking back over the last couple of months at the various road traffic accidents and the increase in percentages, one might ask whether there is an underlying trend or a particular issue, but there is not. We need to study it and be very careful to ensure the new regulations and laws we bring in are fit for purpose. Driver testing was debated last week and there is an issue there. We must ensure young people are getting their tests and getting onto the road as qualified drivers. Suggestions were made last week that it should be tied into second-level education and yes, education is gearing people for life and especially in rural Ireland we do not have the luxury of being without a car. Mandatory driving instruction at post-primary level is hugely important and students should have that facility. There should also be continuing education and campaigns to outline the dangers associated with driving cars, and there are dangers with it. Statements were made appealing to people ahead of this weekend to ensure they are taking road safety very seriously. Also, all of us who walk the roads, day or night, should ensure we have a high-vis jacket on so we are visible to people. That should be mandatory at this stage. There is a huge number of people walking all the time, so this is vitally important. In rural Ireland we are very reliant on the car. People spoke about public transport and the roll-out of the Local Link. There must be a real assessment of Local Link with a focus on how we are putting the best routes in place and building on the routes and the successes of the particular routes that are there. People will use them if they are efficient, effective and if they are on at the times the vast majority of people are travelling at. There is more work to be done on Local Link and getting more people.

Our road infrastructure has improved drastically over the last while, although there are some glaring examples of routes left out. The improvement of the Cork to Limerick road is a priority not just for the area I represent in north Cork, but also for linking the two cities and taking the dangers out of Buttevant and Charleville. Earlier this year people lost their lives, tragically, on the main street in Charleville. We have been engaging with Cork County Council and TII to take a number of steps to make it safer, including tabletop surfaces as traffic comes into the town, but also looking at a relief road in the interim before the bypass itself is built. That bypass will have to be built. It was stopped almost a decade ago and it is now time to move it forward. There is movement on it, but we need to ensure it is there because as our population continues to grow the regions are going to be the hugely important enablers of that growth and so there is fierce need for it.

In TII and the Departments we have an issue with the Mallow relief road. That is a hugely important piece of infrastructure. If we are to talk about road safety, we must ensure we are providing the infrastructure as well, and not just in the cities, which many of the discussions have been about, but also in the provincial towns, including the likes of Mallow, Buttevant and Charleville. In those places we must ensure we have the best possible infrastructure in place. The plans have been in place for many decades and it is time to implement them. I am delighted we have the senior Minister here so we can impress on him the urgency of advancing the M20 and the Mallow relief road. These are hugely important pieces of the jigsaw because if we are serious about road safety, everybody must be working together. We must have the education piece and the qualification piece and driver testing must be on time. The instinct of mankind when there is something wrong is to go for enforcement and the iron fist to try to crack down on it. We must be the great enablers. We must ensure we are selling the message with road safety and getting the message through to all people that there are dangers on the roads and they must make every effort to ensure they are safe, whether driving, walking or cycling.

That brings me to many of the fantastic cycle lanes that have been developed across the country. More of them should be rolled out. The Newmarket-Kanturk route on the old railway line should be investigated and looked at. The Minister will know Newmarket due to his roots, but it is important that the plan is there and it is advanced. All these things help. Every single thing helps, no matter how small it is. We looked at the proposed legislation, the challenges there and bringing forward reductions in speed. Sometimes when the discussion on road safety is being held, the question is asked about whether we are rushing too far with speed, but everything counts. The great issue is to ensure everybody understands the challenges that are there for road safety. People in my own family, but also very good friends of mine have, over the years, lost their lives as a result of road traffic collisions and we have seen the devastation that has left in those families. It is important we honour those people by ensuring the best possible system is in place and we are not just penalising one cohort of people. We should have a broad range of measures so each citizen of the country, in urban Ireland or especially in my area of Duhallow and north Cork, feels they have the infrastructure in place and everything is geared to try to make our roads as safe as possible. Education from a very young age is part of that. We have seen the various campaigns on other issues over many generations and how they have changed attitudes. Back in my youth there was the safe cross code. That same punch is not there in the form of information and making sure people understand the challenges.

Those are the issues. On driver testing wait times, it is very difficult for somebody who is aged 18 and has all the stuff done to be waiting six to eight months, or maybe more, for a test. That needs to be addressed in the short term. There is also a need for further engagement on the availability of Local Link. Then there are the two big pieces of infrastructure. The M20 Cork to Mallow motorway will open up a whole sector of the community and eliminate the safety concerns on the streets of Charleville and Buttevant. The Mallow relief road must also be progressed in the Department as soon as humanly possible.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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This House will be well aware of the tragedies we have seen on the roads of County Tipperary during the last couple of months, with seven people dying over the space of a few days in August. We have had accidents since. The two accidents in August got national headlines, but I send my condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones. It has been a terrible time in Tipperary and nationally and this trend is deeply worrying. Despite this, the number of gardaí is down.

In Tipperary, as of July, it was 382 as opposed to 411 in December 2019. We cannot expect the gardaí to be everywhere but we should expect adequate investment given the 22% increase in seat belt offences, intoxicated driving rising to 183 with 45 drug driving offences at the same time as checkpoints fell by 27%. This goes back to the issue of Garda numbers.

On the road network, I do not understand how the Minister signed off on a cut of €150 million in the network and safety budget given all we have seen this year. While we hear of revision of speed limits, we also hear of more speed ramps and penalty points. These must be appropriate and must address speeding through villages and estates which is rampant. However, they cannot replace the need to address stretches of local, urban and rural roads clearly in need of safety measures. Who will enforce these new measures when we see a lack of gardaí in most areas?

I urge the Minister to engage with the councils on the issues we draw to their attention and help them address these. We have had too much tragedy in Tipperary to cut the budget.

On the N24, TII told the Minister that more deaths and serious injury could result from delaying the Cahir to Limerick Junction bypass but the Minister avoided addressing the issue of safety on the N24 which I raised in recent parliamentary questions to him. Councils had to beg for each funding allocation so either end of the project could progress a stage. This must stop. The 2021 report on the Limerick Junction to Cahir route noted that the N24’s poor alignment through four villages and Tipperary town contributes to unstable traffic flow which yields restricted capacity which is a danger in itself. Both urban and rural sections of the N24 consistently have collision rates above the national average including the Waterford to Cahir route where the number of access roads and junctions adds to the danger. One way to avoid the continuance of fatalities and serious injuries on this road is to progress these projects and prioritise bypass works on the route such as for Tipperary town and to stop withholding the funds needed to progress these projects. Then there is the Thurles bypass which was excluded from the national development plan. The council has been called on to raise this with the Minister. I also note the slow progress on the Thurles inner-relief project and how traffic volumes add to injuries. Then there is the Roscrea bypass at Tullaskeagh which has been prone to some bad accidents in the past as well.

Finally, I want to mention speed ramps. These clearly work. We have eight local authority areas in County Tipperary and the engineers in each seem to have different ideas of how speed ramps work. I do not think anyone doubts that speed ramps in built-up areas should be a given especially in council estates. They slow traffic down and it helps safety. Communities in areas prone to speeding want more of them. Remember that 28 pedestrians have died this year. High-viz vests and cycling campaigns have already been raised but we also need a campaign to educate the public. When you travel Europe you see that at a pedestrian crossing drivers in Europe slow down. We have a population in this country that as soon as they come near a crossing or red light the first thing a driver does is put the boot down and see if they can beat that red light. We need to educate the public that these small things can make a big difference in safety. We need the Minister to reverse the cuts in road networks and safety, give certainty to road upgrades and remedial works on black spots and engage with councils on the issues on our roads, in villages and on the N24. I am asking the Minister to respond to councils on this.

Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent)
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Some 152 people have been killed in crashes on Irish roads so far this year, an increase of 30% on this time last year. In addition, gardaí say they have recorded more than 900 serious injury traffic collisions up to the end of September. Every death is one too many. Although road fatalities are more likely to make headlines, the authority needs to highlight to motorists, and all road users, the life changing impact serious injuries can have. The cognitive and physical consequences serious injuries have for these patients are devastating and affect their day-to-day lives. Serious injuries affect not just the victim of the road traffic incident, they can also be life-changing for their families, their friends and their communities.

Under the road safety strategy, the Government and Garda are working together towards reversing the upward trend of road tragedies through a mix of enforcement and education. On enforcement, speed is the biggest contributing factor in road deaths in Ireland. An estimated 30% of fatal collisions are the result of speeding or inappropriate speed. Following an ongoing two-year review, proposals have been made to lower baseline speed limits on rural roads as well as national secondary roads and roads in built-up and residential areas, which would have a significant impact in reducing serious collisions. Based on the fact that there were 25 deaths in August alone, these speed reductions need to be fast-tracked as numbers of road deaths are rising by the week.

Road safety data show that bank holiday weekends have a higher level of road deaths and serious injuries linked to driving. Under the enforcement plans, motorists who commit traffic offences such as speeding or not wearing a seat belt on bank holiday weekends will face higher penalty points. Under the new Road Traffic Measures Bill 2023, powers would be granted to vary the number of penalty points during specific times when road safety risks are higher. This is a welcome initiative and will be in place for October and there will also be similar plans in place for Christmas and the New Year.

Other measures include a change to intoxicant testing rules whereby gardaí would be required to test for drugs at the scene of road collisions. We want to see people being safe on the road, driving within speed limits, not using mobile phone while driving, which is extremely dangerous - and not using drugs or alcohol while driving. Learning from our Australian counterparts, these initiatives have had a positive impact on driver behaviour.

More than a decade ago, the Road Safety Strategy 2013-2020 included an action to end the loophole that allows learner drivers to continuously renew their licence without having to sit a test. However, up to 30,000 people are on their third or subsequent provisional licence and have never sat a driving test. Even if they did book one, the current delay in getting a driving test is unacceptable. The number of people waiting for driver tests has increased by 61% in the last year. Poor workforce planning by the Government and the Road Safety Authority, RSA, is obstructing many young people. If we are committing to achieving vision zero, with no deaths or serious injuries on our roads by 2050, we must halve the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads by the end of this decade. It is only through a robust testing service that we can have confidence that drivers have been trained and tested to the highest standards on how to handle a vehicle safely on our roads. Research indicates that there was a significant change in drivers’ attitudes and behaviours in relation to behavioural breaches during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, with the number of road deaths rising, we are experiencing the impact of these attitudes and breaches. That is why the education facet of this plan is just as important as enforcement.

A new road safety programme is being introduced to secondary schools around the country. The Assistant Commissioner has stated that roads policing has the highest number of specialist roles allocated to it, with about a quarter of our road safety and road policing work also done by community policing teams. Yet, road policing numbers have been cut by a third. Will the proposed garda rota changes and proposed reduction of community policing numbers effect the implementation of this plan? On top of this, within programme C - road networks and road safety - investment was cut by 10% within this year’s budget, which is €150 million less than last year. How then is road safety and road policing a priority?

We must look at investment in the plan both in terms of adequate personnel to ensure enforcement and adequate investment in the education campaign. Significant funding increases will enable us to repair, strengthen and maintain a road safety campaign across the regions. Significant funding is also required in our road infrastructure to ensure they are suitable for intended purposes. Improving and maintaining our road network is essential to sustained development of local economies in rural Ireland. We need to commit resources to initiatives such as road repairs, road safety measures, community engagements, drainage improvements and climate change adaptation. The Government says it will invest in roads and road safety, yet decreased the amount for road safety in the budget.

When I was a child it was very common for us to play in front of our house. It was a very safe place because there were not too many cars on the road. We could all play football, rounders, chasing and all different types of games. But times have changed. Look at all the new estates and the numbers of houses and the space left to park a car. The Minister will know as well as I do that most of these houses will have two or maybe three cars. They are expected to park one in the drive and the other two on the road. For kids, elderly people and people in wheelchairs it is almost impossible to walk when you stay on the footpath which means people have to walk on the road which is very dangerous.

If people are lucky enough to have a green in their areas, the speed at which cars travel around estates is crazy. I am appealing to the Minister. I have spoken to my local authorities and I cannot get an answer. We need more speed ramps in the estates. We need to reduce speed. The only we can help is to slow down traffic. That would mean kids, elderly people and people with disabilities are safe in those areas.

I also refer to e-scooters. The number of people who have mentioned e-scooters is unreal. I am in my constituency office on Mondays and Fridays, and not a day goes by when people do not come in to complain about e-scooters. They are on the footpaths. It is absolutely crazy. You see them when you go for a walk. They think they have a God-given right to beep their horns, to tell you to move or to shout and roar at you. That is not acceptable. I have first-hand experience in Dundalk of going for a walk in the early morning with my wife. These scooters come along. The worst part is that they are on the footpaths with no lights in the morning time when it may be dark. Even at night-time, any number of e-scooters without lights are flying around the roads. The problem is that there does not seem to be any law enforcement. That is something the Department and the Department of Justice could work closely together on. It is only a matter of time before someone is killed. In Dundalk a few weeks ago, a young person was killed on a scooter. That is the start of it. E-scooters are dangerous. It has reached the stage where we need some kind of regulation. It seems to be a free-for-all. I saw something in one of the national newspapers less than 12 months ago. I was on my local radio station talking about e-scooters and mentioned that there was a photograph in the newspaper of four people on one scooter. I remember the presenter told me it did not happen. When we looked at the photograph, there was a man, a woman and two children on the e-scooter. The man had a child on his shoulders. That was in Dublin. We require enforcement.

There are people out there who use e-scooters to go to work. Kids use them to go to school and wear helmets and do everything right. However, a vast number of people do not give a damn about anybody at all. As I said, they come out on the roads. That also affects bicycles. I am saying to the Minister that we need enforcement. We need to slow down, especially in built-up areas. As I said earlier, every death is one too many.

Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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I will be sharing my time with Deputy Flaherty. We will take seven and four minutes, respectively. Deputy Flaherty can take over whenever I run out of issues for the Minister.

I want to first deal with the Road Traffic Act, as it is now, having been passed and signed by the President over the summer. It contains many initiatives and measures to improve the safety of people on our roads and elsewhere. The Minister will know of my own advocacy in the area of the scrambler bike legislation. I introduced a Private Members' Bill that was incorporated into that Act. I acknowledge that after 20 years of us calling for progress on the matter, the Minister was the first to listen to us. He worked with the Tánaiste and the Attorney General to try to get solutions. At our local safety forum, we were asked when those powers will be made available to the Garda. I met with the Garda Commissioner on the issue. I understand that between the Attorney General's office and the Garda Commissioner's legal office, it is being operationalised. I ask the Minister to do everything in his power to ensure the power to seize is available and the new offence of driving dangerously on a scrambler bike and the other measures are implemented as soon as possible.

I join my colleagues in saying that the e-scooter provisions that were passed as part of that same Act are very important, particularly for pedestrians. I say that because pedestrians are the most vulnerable of all the users of our roads and footpaths. I give my condolences to all those who have died in road traffic accidents. The most recent was in my constituency and involved a pedestrian. We know that pedestrians are the most vulnerable on the roads and, therefore, pedestrian measures are the best way we can protect them. I welcome the new junction control pedestrian crossings at Grace Park Road, which is important. There are three roundabouts in that area, two of which I will talk about. Those are the Oscar Traynor Road-M1 roundabout, the Jamestown Road roundabout and the McKee Avenue-M2 roundabout. There are no pedestrian refuges at all. There is no mechanism for people in the whole of their health to be able to cross those junctions, never mind people in wheelchairs or with buggies, or vulnerable children who are trying to cross. The Minister has provided funding but, unfortunately, the local authorities have been far too slow. I am lost in a morass between the National Transport Authority and the local authority in trying to find out when projects will come forward and be ready and so on. I will write directly to the Minister on the Oscar Traynor Road roundabout, which is a joint project of Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council, and the Jamestown Road roundabout. Pedestrian refuge must be provided on these big old road engineer-style roundabouts. They are not safe for pedestrians. The Minister might come back to me in writing, if he can, on the issue of operationalising the measures for scrambler bikes. They are absolutely needed. Communities are waiting for them to be operationalised by the Garda. They will make an enormous difference in our communities.

Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for Transport for coming to the Chamber to address the important issue of road safety. I will echo some of the points that were made earlier in respect of speed ramps for housing estates. I know we have moved away from speed ramps and towards raised platforms. There is obviously merit in that for young people cycling and so on. However, the process for trying to get those into estates is too onerous and it is too easy for councils to opt out of doing so. It is only a number of years since the tragic case of a child dying in an estate. As a result of that, the speed limits on roads in all housing estates were to be reduced. We need to go further with that. We need to mandate local authorities to identify estates where there are high risks and to put in place measures to improve road safety in those estates. We are finding anecdotally, particularly in larger estates that are off the main roads, that young people who do not have insurance, tax or an NCT certificate are using those estates to drive around. That in itself brings additional concerns and fears.

It would be remiss of me not to use this opportunity while the Minister is in the House to address the thorny issue of the upgrade of the N4 from Mullingar to Roosky, a 52 km stretch of road. It is one of 15 or so road projects around the country that are currently held up and awaiting funding. We are desperately awaiting news that there will be funding to continue this route selection process in 2024. It has been brought as far as possible with money made available so far. We now need desperately to select the route. It has been an unfortunate process. A preferred route was selected and announced in 2010 but as we know and as history will tell us, the economy collapsed and with it went the hopes of the N4. The reality is this is a particularly dangerous stretch of road. No one road death commands more weight or political clout than any other but the reality is that since 2008 on this particular 52 km stretch of road, there have been 20 fatalities and 34 serious road accidents. There have been a further 218 collisions and crashes. It is a carriageway road. There are over 500 access points to private houses and laneways along the route. There is a multiplicity of opportunities for and threats of danger and accidents. It is a real concern. Every road death is a tragedy and a horrific loss of life. There are approximately 20 families who travel that road and pass the mark where their relations died. That is a constant reminder for them.

We have gone through the budget process and looked at the country and the considerable excess of money, and the potential for largesse, we have at the moment. The greatest investment we can make is in the area of road safety. I admire much of the work the Minister is doing in respect of cycleways. I can see the evidence of that in Longford town. However, it behoves us to ensure that we progress the N4 during the lifetime of this Government. It is an extremely important section of roadway for the economic growth and prosperity of Longford and the wider west of Ireland region. Primarily, I am making an impassioned appeal to the Minister to ensure that before the end of the year, an announcement on ensuring that there is funding in 2024 for the N4 and those related road projects nationally. I am grateful for the indulgence.

Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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To an increasing number of people, this Government is making the issues of road safety and the criminalisation of road users, especially drivers, almost identical but they are not. We know from the National Household Travel Survey that almost seven in ten, or 69%, of all road trips are made by car. In that context, the number of safety issues that can be attributed to the careless actions of drivers is extremely low. If anything, more of the safety issues that arise can be attributed to poor road conditions, low visibility, overgrown hedgerows, as well as poor road lining and marking. More funding needs to be put into our local authorities. I commend the staff of our local authorities, particularly the staff in Laois and Offaly with whom I am familiar, who do a fantastic job given that they are up against it in terms of funding and trying to stretch funding to make sure roads are catered for and prioritised.

Despite this and despite the fact that road safety should be a very high priority, as my colleagues and I have pointed out in this House, in budget 2024 only €1.2 billion was allocated for our road network. This represents a substantial decrease of almost €200 million on the previous year's allocation of €1.375 billion. I fail to understand the rationale for cutting the funding for roads. Should safety not be a priority for the Minister for Transport? I ask the Minister to look at this immediately and to increase the roads funding in the context of road safety and those issues that need to be addressed throughout this State. Our local authorities need more funding to make our roads safer.

There are also safety issues related to cycling, pedestrian and integrated travel measures. A recent Offaly County Council briefing to Oireachtas Members highlighted the ongoing need to invest in projects such as the Tullamore bike hire share scheme, the safer routes to schools cycling strategy, and footpath improvements. The problem is that funding for these projects is not always available and is precarious at best because it is not multi-annual funding. That is the problem. Local authorities often cannot get to these projects because there is just not enough funding.

I acknowledge that funding has been provided this year for the Birr distributor northern road project under the specific improvement grant scheme, but not before time. That scheme has been awaited for years. I also welcome the funding for the L1014 in Walsh Island village. I advocated for safety improvements in Walsh Island. I met with the local people and the council engineer to try to ensure funding was available and priority was given to Walsh Island. I also welcome the works on the R420 Portarlington to Clonygowan road at Derreen, but again they are long overdue. There are many other roads that are being forgotten.

We need to see the kind of investment we have seen in Walsh Island, Birr and Portarlington in terms of the R420 continue. At the same time, we need to see less of an attempt to throw all of the blame for road safety issues back onto the motorist because that is just not the case.

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent)
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Road safety is an issue of acute concern for every Member of this House. As we head into the bank holiday weekend, we are all thinking of the 155 lives lost on Irish roads since the start of this year, an increase of 36 on this time last year. My thoughts are with all of those families today.

In the context of fatalities, I want to mention a section of the N67 in Clare. This road sees a high volume of traffic every day, including commuters travelling between Clare and Galway and tourists travelling to areas like the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher in one direction and Lahinch, Doonbeg and Kilkee in the other direction. I also highlight the N68 between Ennis and Kilrush, through Lissycasey. Both of these roads require serious investment. The N68 is above the national average with respect to the rate of injuries on the roadvis-à-vismaterial collisions.

I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge Mr. Jerry O'Connor, may he rest in peace, who was killed in August on the Ballycannoe road outside Ballyvaughan. Unfortunately, the incident leading to his death was the fifth serious accident on this part of the road, which is viewed locally as a blackspot. We need to see a significant reduction of speed. I spoke to his amazing wife, Helga, who has been so brave in speaking out about this issue since her husband's death. She mentioned that in Denmark, for example, speed limits in towns and villages have been reduced to 30 km/h. She asked if that can be considered in her area, which has a playground, church and health centre. I would also like to take this opportunity to formally invite the Minister to the area to see the road environment for himself and I look forward to the Minister's response on that.

I was disappointed to see that current expenditure in the Department will be down by 2% next year, especially in view of all of the talk about road safety in recent months. I raised the issue of local authority funding for roads with the Taoiseach a few months ago. He pointed to significant increases in inflation, a reduction in funding and talked about how that will have a knock-on effect.

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I thank each of the Deputies for contributing to what is a hugely important debate. Almost everyone in this House would have personal experience of the tragedy that is the loss of a life or serious injury on the road, whether of friends or family. It leaves such a black hole and has such a devastating impact on all concerned. We have to do everything we can to try to reduce road deaths and serious injuries which cause such hurt and harm. We were seeing real progress. The figures back in 1997 were shocking, with 472 fatalities in that year. Those figures were one of the things that spurred the first of the new road safety strategies the following year, in 1998. Thanks to a variety of initiatives, including improvements in our roads and in vehicles, improvements in the testing of cars and driver training, stronger laws around intoxication and the monitoring and management of speed, we saw a significant improvement in the number of road fatalities. This happened across a number of governments and involved a variety of different agencies. However, it is a real concern that since 2018, with the exception of 2021 when there were very low volumes of traffic due to Covid restrictions, we have started to see the numbers increase again. As of yesterday morning, there were 154 deaths on our roads this year. Those deaths are a tragedy for each family. I offer our condolences, concerns and prayers to every one of those families. Road deaths are a disaster and a tragedy we have to try to avert, and to do so quickly.

The key response is our road safety strategy out to 2030. That aligns with what we have committed to doing within the European Union. It works on what is called a safe system approach, involving a systemic assessment of what is happening on our roads and what we can do about it. Like a lot of Government and agency plans, it sets out a whole series of actions. There are 50 actions in the plan and the first phase runs to 2024. There are 50 high-impact actions and 134 supporting actions. We are trying to measure what we need to do and monitor progress in that regard. We are due to conduct a review in 2024 with a view to going into the second phase, when we will change course, do more or try to do things more effectively, based on the experience of what is happening.

During this first phase of the strategy and because of this recent spike in the number of road fatalities, we have reviewed the first phase of the action plan and have brought in new initiatives in response to the increase in fatalities this year. A number of new priorities have been progressed, including a review of the operation of the mobile speed camera system, research aimed at understanding driver behaviour to try to find out the causes of this recent increase, and reform of the penalty point system, which I will elaborate on shortly. We have also been looking at cross-agency funding of road safety investment and at advancing the alcohol interlock programme. Other priorities include supporting and streamlining roads policing, reviewing the test curriculum and implementing the speed limit review.

A number of Deputies mentioned the importance of the Road Traffic and Roads Act 2023. That legislation contains a very significant and broad suite of measures aimed at improving road safety. It addresses the issue of scramblers, which Deputy McAuliffe mentioned, and we will look to commence the relevant measures as soon as we can.

4 o’clock

There has been an increase in the number of deaths involving e-scooters. People know the power and speed of e-scooters has to be regulated. We are planning for the introduction of average speed cameras, which are proven to work in terms of reducing speed in a systemic way, and allowing for variable traffic speed limits on the likes of the M50. Of great importance will be significant legislative changes to improve the insurance database to ensure there are fewer uninsured drivers, who lead to increased injury rates. There will be a range of other measures.

We know we have to go further, particularly in respect of the main causes of road fatalities, namely, speeding, intoxication and driver behaviour. In that context, I will set out a number of initiatives the Government is advancing. First, there will be the outcome of that speed review to correctly bring about radical change for the better. Doing so is not an attack on drivers as some might fear but rather a move to protect drivers. The default speed limits throughout the country will be reviewed. On national secondary roads, the limit will go from 100 km/h down to 80 km/h. For many roads throughout the country, everyone knows the speed limit is way beyond the safe characteristics of the road. Local roads will go from 80 km/h to 60 km/h and those in urban areas will go from 50 km/h to 30 km/h. We have a job ahead of us to implement that, working with local authorities. It will have a critical impact in terms of reducing injuries, however, and we must ensure it is enforced to the full in order that we get benefit from it.

Second, with regard to penalty points, we will introduce several initiatives in further legislation this year to address the issue of driver behaviour and encourage safer driving for the benefit of everyone on our streets. There will be a change to the current provision that gives rise to the unfair situation whereby a driver who commits multiple offences concurrently only gets one penalty point, whereas a driver who commits a series of offences at different times gets the full points. We will amend that to send a clear signal in respect of better and safer driving. In the context of variable application of speed limits, we are moving towards getting enforcement working at times such as at weekends when we really want to have that variable capability. There will be new measures relating to intoxication. We will be introducing legislation to provide that, in the event of a serious incident or accident, gardaí will be obliged to test not only for alcohol but also for drugs, which are an increasing element in driver behaviour that is causing fatalities.

With regard to the issue of roads investment and the wider transport budget investment, I heard Deputy Flaherty's remarks in respect of the N4. Numerous other roads throughout the country were also mentioned. We have €100 billion worth of transport projects in development but only €35 billion in the overall capital envelope. We have to be careful not to promise that every project can be developed in the lifetime of this Government or in the immediate future, but we are progressing. I recently met with the board of TII. Most of our discussion related to the issue of road safety. I told TII we need to make sure we are investing in the road network for safety and with a renewed focus. In particular, we need to consider what measures we could introduce at places where accidents tend to happen, such as at junctions or on roads where there might not be segregation or a dual carriageway, but also to bring speeds down on the main carriageway. TII is committed to that and we will not be found short in terms of providing the support it and local authorities need to deliver safer roads.

There will be benefits from investment in public transport and safer active walking and cycling. I agree with Deputy Martin Kenny that although there have been improvements in recent years, our streets are not safe. They are not safe for children to walk and cycle to school, or even for experienced cyclists such as the Deputy. That must change as a way of protecting lives. It must also involve a modal shift towards public transport and active travel. We will have safer and more effective roads for everyone where we are not in this gridlocked system. The encouragement of that switch to public transport, which is increasing, with bus and rail numbers currently expanding rapidly, is one of the other elements that can help us to deliver safer roads.

I am glad we are able to have this debate today. It is important. It is a significant issue for families throughout the country. Out of respect to people whose friends or family members have been involved in accidents, especially in the past year, it is important we give time to debate this issue and come back to it again to measure and monitor the progress we now need to make.