Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State has said that the term "high collision locations" is not legally defined. TII use this on their website as a term when looking for these accident black spots - which we generally call them - so obviously TII has a definition for it. It is very easy to define the term as meaning an area where multiple collisions have occurred over a period. To me this is a real definition of what we are talking about here. With regard to the issue around whether we are making the local authority bound to it, the Minister of State is really saying that the Government is not prepared to put the money forward. This is basically what it comes down to. This is about binding to it and this is what it is doing. It is making sure that it actually happens. This is the problem we have. In Sligo recently, I was sitting in the front room of a man that looks out on the road where a woman was killed some months ago. From his front room he pointed out to me different parts of the road where accidents have occurred continually over the last two decades. Some of these accidents have been tragic where people lost their lives. This is what I am talking about. We need to have legislation that actually does something to prevent these accidents from occurring.

The main body of work we are dealing with in the legislation today is about reducing speed limits across the board everywhere. It gives the impression that the reason a lot of these collisions happen is because people are driving within the existing speed limit and that this speed limit is not low enough. When I talk to people, whether it is members of An Garda Síochána, people who work in accident and emergency, or wherever else, they tell me that the reason most of these accents occur is because people are driving well in excess of the existing speed limit, not within it. Yet the Government is coming forward with legislation the main focus of which is reducing the existing speed limit. This is where we differ. We are on the same page about preventing the accidents from occurring and trying to deal with this situation but the big problem is that the Government's legislation is singularly focused on reducing speed limits in the context where the reason a lot of these accidents occur is that people - often with intoxication or other reasons - are driving well in excess of those speed limits. We do not have appropriate measures of enforcement and have seen the Garda roads policing units cut so much over the years. That is really the problem and it is why I brought these particular amendments. We need to deal with the situation of high-collision locations where a lot of accidents happen. We need to have the teeth in legislation to ensure that local authorities or TII actually go in there to do the work to make these roads safer for people to travel on.