Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach. It is really good to be in this committee as I have a particular interest in transport and I would like to come more often. This subject is very important to me as I have a family member who lost a loved one to a road death. The Minister of State mentioned too that his own family was impacted in a similar way.

This is critically important. In recent weeks and months we have seen a really alarming spike in injuries and fatalities. I congratulate the Minister of State on showing such leadership on the issue, and indeed his officials for the work being done in bringing this critically important legislation to the Oireachtas. The Minister of State is to be commended. I recognise he is really leading on this.

I have three points to make and perhaps some of them are outside the remit of the legislation. Notwithstanding this, they are important points to make. My first point is on the enforcement. We have not really spoken about the use of camera technology to capture bad behaviour by motorists. There is a culture of this, particularly in urban areas. We often talk about speeding in rural Ireland but in urban areas, at every change of traffic lights you will see two or three cars going past the amber light and through the red light. This is all part of a culture of getting where we want to go as fast as we can and perhaps knowing we are not going to be caught. I have been pushing on this issue, and I am aware that colleagues across the Oireachtas have been pushing on this too, with regard to cameras at traffic lights and a portal where citizens can upload examples of bad behaviour. This issue is just being passed around from Department to Department and from State agency to State agency. It needs a political leader to grasp it and ensure we actually make progress. As far as I can see, we are not making progress. If we can get past the administrative, legal and technical challenges, there is a huge benefit to be accrued from tackling the issues around breaking red lights, parking on footpaths, parking in bus lanes, and parking in cycle lanes. Cameras on buses can record car driver behaviour as buses are driving their route. It is a critically important issue that needs somebody to run with it and make progress on it.

The second issue is probably outside the remit of this legislation, which is the alarming trend in sales of heavier and larger vehicles now. I chaired the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action. We had a presentation from the European Federation for Transport and Environment, a lobby group based in Brussels. We were discussing the climate consideration of this trend but every member of that committee was struck by the safety issues that came through. Everyone walked out of the room that day and said we have to address this. These vehicles are safer for the people in them but they create a hostile and dangerous environment for the people outside of them. That is a real problem. I do not believe success in the context of road safety can only be measured by reduced fatalities and reduced injuries, even were we to get down to zero fatalities and injuries, if in tandem with that we create an utterly hostile environment for people who are walking and cycling such that we do not have people using those modes. That would not be success. We must address that alarming trend.

The third issue is around access to collision data from the Road Safety Authority, RSA, for roads researchers and road safety auditors, and indeed for practitioners at local and national level. I understand it was discussed last week at a Society of Road Safety Auditors' seminar in Sligo. Apparently there is an issue with GDPR, and this has gone to the commissioner. There is a lot of concern, especially among road safety auditors and researchers, that they do not have access to historical collision data. It is very much in the public interest. Many countries produce anonymised data about collisions that in turn go on to inform policies. There is a gap there. In addition, the RSA produced a child casualties report recently. The statistics on the numbers of serious injuries and fatalities of children over the past eight years is truly shocking, with 56 children killed in the past eight years and 852 seriously injured. Interestingly, two out of three of those were on urban roads. The report focused solely on the victim and did not actually show data relating to the driver, the type of vehicle, the road design and so on. Perhaps the Minister of State will relay that concern back to the Road Safety Authority. If for some reason data are not provided for researchers, it is a real problem and we need to overcome this.