Mr. John Twomey:

What I am happy about is that over that period there has been a considerable reduction in the number of people who have lost their lives on our roads and in the number of serious injuries. If we look at this in its broadest context, the primary focus of An Garda Síochána is to make our roads a safer place. We do that in a number of ways. Primarily we do it through the enforcement of the Road Traffic Act. We also do it through education. We avail of the opportunity of press releases to inform the public of not only the role of An Garda Síochána but everybody's role to be responsible and that working in partnership we can make the roads a safer place.

We have achieved that objective and there has been a considerable improvement in road safety and a considerable reduction in the number of people who have lost their lives. We need to remember the core and key objective we were trying to achieve. In the mid-2000s and going back way beyond that, the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads was much higher than it is at present. The record of An Garda Síochána and the other agencies working in this area is to be commended in many respects. From that perspective the work of An Garda Síochána has been well done. As was mentioned earlier by some of the other Deputies, we have had a considerable reduction in the number of people killed on our roads. As we sit here today, there has been a reduction in 2017 over 2016. That is a key core objective.

We continue to focus on the enforcement of the Road Traffic Act on the key offences to save lives. That is only part of the role. The work that has been done has been very good and we will continue to do this. I accept we have made mistakes along the way and that we will find areas to improve. We will continue to do that next year, the year after and every other year. The key objective of An Garda Síochána was to reduce the number of road deaths and serious injuries and I think we have achieved that.