Harris: We’ve got to get real on roads
€3m spend on safety amid rising death toll
A FURTHER €3million is to be spent on road safety campaigns this year as part of a suite of measures aimed at reducing rising road deaths.
Taoiseach Simon Harris and several Cabinet ministers met with representatives from the Road Safety Authority (RSA) yesterday.
So far this year, 63 people have been killed on Irish roads with half of those aged under 30.
The death toll so far is 15 higher than the same period last year.
A proposal from the RSA-led Data Enabler Group will be provided to the Data Protection Commissioner regarding the sharing of collisions data as soon as possible with a commitment to introduce legislative changes if required. Road engineering teams
‘We have individual responsibility too’
in local councils have not been able to view data on any road collisions during the past six years, meaning they do not know what part of the road infrastructure needs to be improved.
Minister of State with responsibility for road safety Jack Chambers last week said that he will bring recommendations on reforming the RSA to Cabinet in the summer. An independent review of the organisation is currently being conducted by Indecon. Mr Chambers, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan and Minister for Justice Helen McEntee also attended the meeting with RSA chairwoman Liz O’Donnell and CEO Sam Waide.
The funding for the road safety campaign is to come from the RSA’s reserves.
It was agreed that the delivery of 12 new camera enforcement sites in the coming months, three of which are average speed cameras, will be progressed. It was also agreed to seek to resolve technical and legal issues to allow enforcement cameras to identify mobile phone use and lack of seatbelt-wearing as offences.
An Garda Síochána are to be requested to provide ongoing enforcement activity plans.
Mr Harris has said that he is concerned with the low numbers of gardaí in the roads policing unit amid a spike in road deaths, particularly among young people.
He said that Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has committed to increasing the number of gardaí in the unit this year after increases in 2023 and 2024 in the number of road fatalities. Mr Harris announced the new strategy last Thursday for frontline gardaí to police the roads for 30 minutes per shift, but it was branded a ‘useless PR exercise’ and ‘a sticking plaster for what is a horrendous wound’ by gardaí and politicians. Numerous sources within the force said that the edict from HQ would have ‘no effect’.
One member of the force based in the southwest said: ‘What’s needed is a complete overhaul of the roads policing system. It also doesn’t make sense from a practical standpoint. Gardaí are already overworked and bogged down with admin work.’
Another member based in the capital told the Mail that the new orders will put pressure on officers to hit targets and increase their statistics, saying: ‘This is a political decision. It’s not a policing one.’
The Taoiseach emphasised the responsibility on each citizen to be safe on Irish roads, and said that ‘you don’t need a guard to tell you not to drink and drive’.
He went on: ‘We’re not in a good place at all, to put it mildly, in relation to the trend regarding loss of lives on roads. We have made a lot of progress as a country and we need to ask ourselves, why is that progress being reversed? I was really concerned to see over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend that the gardaí detected so many people driving under the influence of drink and driving under the influence of drugs. We’ve got to get real in relation to our own individual responsibilities as well,’ he said.
Mr Harris said one of his first meetings as Taoiseach was with the Garda Commissioner and Justice Minister Helen McEntee last Friday, where the issue of road safety was discussed. He said that the Garda boss assured him that he was prioritising road safety, and discussed a directive issued to members to allocate 30 minutes of road policing to each shift. ‘Thirty minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, 30 minutes multiplied by the number of guards is a significant period of time,’ he said.
Meanwhile Mr Chambers said the trend of rising road deaths has been ‘shocking’ and the Government is working ‘collectively to try and reverse that’.
The Fianna Fáil TD said that the road traffic bill, which will lower speed limits along some roads, needed to be matched with ‘a serious uplift in enforcement’.
‘Gardaí are already overworked’