Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to join in extending condolences to Deputy Verona Murphy and to our colleague, Deputy Denise Mitchell, who also lost her father yesterday. I extend condolences to both families.

We need to have statements, questions and answers with the Ministers for Justice and Transport on the issue of road deaths. I am struck by the fact that we have seen a spike in the loss of life, especially in rural Ireland. Some years ago we had an horrendous levels of deaths on our roads and there was a multi-agency plan and approach, which was properly resourced, between the Road Safety Authority, An Garda Síochána and the local authorities. Consequentially, we saw the numbers of deaths drop but we are going backwards now and this is a cause for concern for all of us. The number of gardaí assigned to the Garda national roads policing bureau has fallen by 17% in the past decade, despite the fact that we have greater volumes of traffic and a larger population. We need to talk about this and to make time for it because too many lives have been lost and too many families have been heartbroken. We need to collectively get to grips with it.

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