Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I will make a few general points and then move on to some more specific issues. First, a homogeneous approach to speed limit reduction will not work. We can all think of examples of roads in our constituencies and home communities that have a speed limit that is too low and many more roads that have a speed limit that is too high. The Department will have to give a huge amount of discretion to local authorities in this regard and to the elected members of those authorities. In my 16 years as a councillor, I found it very frustrating that we were locked into periodic speed limit reviews. When I first became a councillor in 2004, I could bring a resolution forward to a council meeting and if it got past the local gardaí, the council engineer would consider it and the speed limit could be changed in a matter of weeks. Now we are locked into five-year reviews. I hate using the cliché, but does it take someone to die? It does, because when someone dies, unfortunately, that triggers a review. It is a clichéd remark that we hear at all public meetings but it does take someone to die to trigger a review. Otherwise, councils are locked into linear, five-year reviews. We must break out of that cycle. If there is good reason, from a safety point of view, to change a speed limit, it should happen. We should not be telling councillors that the next review is not until 2028. I ask the Minister of State to respond to that point.