Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this and I wish the Minister of State all the best in his new role. The first person to be killed in the world in an automobile accident was in Ireland. Mary Ward fell under the wheels of a motor vehicle while she was travelling in Birr, County Offaly, in 1869. Since then the number of deaths on our roads has been catastrophic. As of 16 April, 63 people had died this year. That represents a 15% increase on the same period last year. There are serious questions here for the Minister of State, the Government and the Road Safety Authority. One third of those who died were aged 25 or younger. Of that number, and they are all people not statistics, 12 were pedestrians, 26 were drivers, 19 were passengers, four were motorcyclists and two were cyclists. It is extraordinary that we are told that road deaths per million inhabitants in Ireland are below the EU average, so we can imagine what it is like in Europe. We had the worst percentage increase of any country in that period, notwithstanding the work of the Road Safety Authority. We have the third highest level of deaths on rural roads in the EU. Some 188 people died in 177 fatal collisions in 2023. That is an increase of 21%. In the same year, 32 more people lost their lives, leaving their families devastated, than in 2022. Galway city and county recorded 13 fatalities.

I could go on about those figures. What lessons do I want to draw from them? How is this happening? We know that alcohol is a major feature in over one third of these deaths. Lack of enforcement is an issue. We have the Garda Commissioner telling us that it is not a problem, to paraphrase what was said at the Committee of Public Accounts. As of the end of February, there were 627 members assigned to the Garda National Roads Policing Bureau. That compares with 1,046 in 2009. Now we are at 627. In Galway, we have 37, which is the lowest ever availability of staff. There were 47 gardaí in roads policing in Galway in 2009 and 37 now. There are many more cars on the road and much less enforcement.

We have all received a letter from 30 community groups, four of them from Galway, which I list because they have done fantastic work on the ground. They include the Galway Cycle Bus, the Galway Cycling Campaign, Wheels of Athenry and MÓR Action in Oranmore. Those are four from Galway out of 30 community groups.

I am sad to say they tell us they have lost faith in the Road Safety Authority. They go on to speak about the emphasis being put on young children as opposed to the people breaking the law and enforcement. This is difficult to read because I have empathy for the Road Safety Authority as it has been underfunded. It was supposed to be self-funded with the NCT and driver testing but that is not possible. This is a catastrophe and the Minister of State needs to take a hands-on approach to the matter.

Then there is an absence of data which, based on an earlier comment by the Minister of State, I understand will be sorted out with regard to GDPR. Dr. Kevin Gildea, a research fellow at Lund University in Sweden, put this in a nutshell. He said Irish officials responsible for road safety intervention are shooting in the dark because they are unable to access collision data. If this has been sorted out, I welcome it. Then we have the local authorities being given flexibility, which is problematic enough, but on top of this they are underresourced. I spent 17 years of my life on a local authority and they are more underresourced now than they ever were. This is something that must be tackled if we are serious.

I want to focus on water safety because it is ignored. While we are speaking about deaths on the road, the figures with regard to water safety are also extraordinary. Over the five-year period between 2017 and 2021, there were 1,298 deaths on the roads and in the water. Of these, 45% were in the water. This information is courtesy of Sábhálteacht Uisce na hÉireann and I happened to meet the acting deputy CEO last week. The majority of these drownings were in the victim's own county. The majority were male. They are people who were not wearing a life jacket. Suicides account for 35%. These are extraordinary figures. Another cause was people overestimating their ability. There was also cold shock and poor equipment. The figures are shocking.

From what I have read and from my meeting, I understand that it is possible to stop this. However, Sábhálteacht Uisce na hÉireann is working on a tiny budget, just like the Road Safety Authority. The education programme it has is superb but, again, it is limited to small groups. It has done tremendous work. It speaks about education and awareness. Unless the Minister of State and the Government take a hands-on approach, it will not happen. It needs proper funding. The people who are employed and its volunteers do a superb job but they cannot go on. The number of deaths on our roads and in our waterways is a catastrophe.

With regard to the waterways, it is extraordinary that 26% of our population think swimming is an unnecessary life skill and 32% never swim. This is the background to wasted lives and terrible tragedies and a terrible legacy left in families and in our health services at every level, including mental health and physical health. I appeal to the Minister of State to take a hands-on approach to this.

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