18/07/2024
Fitzpatrick pleads for further funding to help reduce dangerous driving
Independent TD Peter Fitzpatrick has called on the Tánaiste Micheál Martin to liase with the Minister for Transport to ensure adequate funding is provided to the RSA towards enforcement and towards research and education campaigns to reduce dangerous driving. Fitzpatrick said that he couldn’t remember when he wa slast stopped at a checkpoint and that gardaí needed to get back out on the road to help curb dangerous driving on our roads.
“As recently as five years ago, Ireland was being celebrated within the EU for road safety following a reduction in fatalities of over 40% yet this week Ireland's road death toll hit 100 people, meaning the overall number is now 14% higher than last year and we are just over halfway through the year. The year 2024 is on course to prove the most lethal for traffic fatalities in 15 years.
“In my constituency alone, in the last week there was a three car accident at Bellurgan petrol station and an accident just before exit 17 northbound where a car and caravan hit each other causing significant damage. This is causing a lot of tragedy in local communities.
The three main challenges are speeding and drink and drug driving. This is a massive challenge of our time. Since 2019, people aged between 16 and 25 have represented 20% of all road deaths despite making up only 12% of the population. This trend is sadly continuing in 2024.
“Will the Tánaiste liaise with the Minister for Transport to ensure adequate funding is provided to the RSA towards enforcement and towards research and education campaigns to reduce dangerous driving? For example, in 2006, the random checkpoints came in and it put the fear of God into everybody. It worked. We need to put more initiatives in place. Every life lost on the roads is a tragedy.
Our roads are not safe. I ask the Tánaiste to please listen. Our footpaths are not safe. You cannot even go on a footpath now because of e-scooters and bicycles. Our loved ones are passing away. These are things that can be prevented. On behaviour, when the Tánaiste and I were children - we are roughly the same age - we could go out our front doors and play a bit of football on the streets. Those days are long gone. There is no respect any more.
We have to get enforcement and sanctions. The Garda plays a big part in that. I have lived in the Dundalk area for the past number of years. I do not know when I was last stopped at a checkpoint. I am lucky enough in that I do not drink, and I pay tax on my car and do not have a problem, but it seems enforcement has completely and utterly stopped. It is totally and utterly wrong. We need action. Children are going out at night-time. We all hope that they come home and there will not be a knock on the door with police coming to say something has happened to them. Prevention is the best cure. A lot of money is being invested at present in the roads, which have improved. However, we need to do something about drugs, speed and drink. The Garda has to play a big part in that. It is up to the Government and the Minister to get it done. I ask the Tánaiste to please help and stop all these young people dying.
Responding to Deputy Fitzpatrick, An Tánaiste accused him of looking at the issue through rose tinted glasses noting that a lot more people were killed on our roads when he was growing up despite the fact there were way less cars back then. He did acknowledge however that more work needed to be done to continue to bring down the number of deaths on our roads.
“Behaviour is at the centre of this. The Deputy referenced an earlier era, although we sometimes look back with rose-tinted glasses at the seventies and so on. More people were killed on our roads then, when there were far fewer cars, than today, which speaks to that era and its lack of proactive safety measures. That is why what we did in the late nineties and early 2000s in particular, when Noel Dempsey was Minister, had impact. We need to rediscover that.
“There is a drugs issue. Deputy Chambers, when he was Minister of State at the Department of Transport, moved on that as regards mandatory drug testing. That is increasingly happening in parallel with alcohol, which is as prevalent an issue now as it was in earlier eras, and is impacting on road safety. All levels, including human behaviour, An Garda Síochána, strengthening the legislation on limits, and the national road safety camera framework and so forth, are required to get these numbers down. We will continue to work on that. I thank the Deputy for raising the issue,” concluded the Tánaiste.
