Mr. Drew Harris:

I thank the Chairman and committee members for the invitation to attend the meeting to discuss this very important issue. I am joined by Assistant Commissioner Paula Hilman, who has responsibility for roads policing and community engagement within An Garda Síochána.

I share members' deep concern in respect of the current level of road traffic fatalities, and I assure them and the public that An Garda Síochána remains committed to road safety and to reducing the number of fatalities on our roads. To date, 72 people have lost their lives on Irish roads this year. Their families are grieving and missing a loved one, and their lives have been changed forever. To those families, I extend my deepest sympathies, and I reiterate that for An Garda Síochána, any death on our roads is one too many. This is why we consider road safety a very serious matter. We are committed to working with all our partners and communities to ensure our roads are a safer place for all. We acknowledge we cannot solve this problem alone, and we continue to work in partnership with the Road Safety Authority and other statutory bodies and interagency partners to strengthen our collaboration and to achieve Vision Zero under the Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030.

As members will know, the first phase action plan of the strategy, out to 2024, involves 186 actions for delivery by the partners to the strategy under the seven safe system priority intervention areas. While I acknowledge we are facing pressures in resourcing and demand throughout An Garda Síochána, I assure the committee and the public that there is certainly no organisational policy to reduce the numbers of our members in roads policing units. Garda recruitment continues and accelerates, and as additional Garda members become available, they are being deployed to priority areas, including roads policing. We plan to add 75 gardaí to roads policing this year and a further 75 in 2025, and working towards this, we are proactively recruiting into our roads policing units.

We have competitions for new allocations in the eastern, north-western and southern regions. Meanwhile, allocations to roads policing units in the Dublin metropolitan region have already commenced from an existing panel.

In recognition of the upward trend in road fatalities, we are also implementing a number of key measures which have proven success in curbing poor driver behaviour in other jurisdictions. This includes the recent road traffic enforcement measure which calls for 30 minutes of high-visibility roads policing duty during every uniform tour of duty. This has the effect of increasing Garda visibility, which, in turn, works to moderate driver and road user behaviour, as well as increase enforcement.

In the first four weeks of the 30-minute operation, which commenced on 12 April 2024, we saw increases in detections based on a comparable period in March. This included a 55% increase in fixed charge notices being issued for mobile phone use; a 40% increase in the number of breath tests conducted at mandatory intoxicant testing, or MIT, checkpoints; and a 17% increase in those detected driving under the influence. This led to a 30% increase in the number of vehicles seized under section 41 of the Road Traffic Acts, as amended. We can go into more detail on that later.

All front-line members of An Garda Síochána, even those outside of full-time roads policing units, have a role to play in the enforcement of road traffic legislation and do so on a daily basis. For instance, in 2023, non-roads policing allocated personnel were responsible for 70% of driving under the influence detections and 24.5% of the enforcement of mobile phone, seatbelt and speeding offences. We are all aware that speed kills, but just to provide some context to this, it has been shown that if a pedestrian is struck by a vehicle travelling at 50 km/h, they have a 50% chance of surviving the collision. However, that reduces significantly to just 10% if they are struck by a vehicle travelling at 60 km/h. A small change in speed can and does have a huge impact.

On our enforcement activity in this area, we have issued 45,951 fixed charge notices for speeding so far this year. Of those, approximately 70% were detected via the use of mobile safety cameras. There are currently 55 mobile safety cameras operational nationwide. This is set to increase to 58 in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, following the successful roll-out of two average speed safety camera systems on the N7 and at the Dublin Port tunnel, three more will be added in quarter 3 of this year along the N3, N5 and N2.

Working from our own Garda budget and supported by the Department of Justice, we have supplemented the existing mobile safety cameras and average safety cameras with new static safety cameras, which will be installed along nine national routes in other locations across the country in quarter 4 of this year. These nine static speed cameras will cost €2.4 million over the next 18 months. Their locations have been selected based on fatal and serious injury collision data from the last seven years.

Beyond that, I have requested that Assistant Commissioner Hilman develop a business case for the introduction of further speed cameras. We aim to substantially increase the number of static speed cameras. A business case will be prepared as part of An Garda Síochána’s application for its overall funding in the 2025 Estimates process.

I also acknowledge that Garda members have been working hard in the area of road safety and we are seeing the impact of this in our enforcement statistics and also in the development and expansion of our education activities within communities. We have issued 7,557 fixed charge notices in respect of mobile phone use so far this year. This is to remind the public that it only takes a split second for the unthinkable to happen.

As of 9 May 2024, we had detected 2,870 incidents of driving while intoxicated either under the influence of alcohol or drugs. We introduced a new DrugWipe technology in December 2022, which delivers fast and very reliable results in detecting a range of illicit drugs. Based on last year’s data, we have seen that drug driving detections account for over one third of detections of driving while intoxicated. This is a very worrying trend. The DrugWipe test is one of the many advances that have been made to support gardaí in their roads policing efforts. We have also improved our roadside breath test devices and speed detection equipment and increased the number of automated number plate recognition, APNR, equipped vehicles.

In addition, An Garda Síochána has enhanced its policing technologies. For instance, all gardaí can now issue fixed charge notices and check vehicle data, personal data and insurance data directly through a personal mobility device on the side of the road. Since the introduction of the insurance data app on mobility devices, we have seen a steady increase in the number of vehicles detained where the reason includes no insurance. This year to date, we have seized 6,675 vehicles where one of the reasons for doing so related to the driver having no insurance. This represents a 70% increase on the same period in 2023.

For our roads to be safe, we cannot solely rely on enforcement and we have a complementary approach in respect of education. We recognise that educating people of all ages has the potential to help keep more people safe on or near our roads. To that end, we actively engage in workplace briefings, deliver road safety talks in schools and third level institutions, as well as delivering primary schools and transition year road safety programmes. Further to this activity, An Garda Síochána rolled out the lifesaver project nationally in October 2023. This is a hard-hitting interactive road safety talk which can be delivered to school groups, industry professionals or community groups and highlights the impact of road traffic collisions. We continue to carry out high-profile days of action, such as our recent national slow down day, which work to highlight and promote road safety. We utilise communications tools such as our social media channels and our flagship television programme "Crimecall" to highlight road traffic enforcement.

In April, we launched a series of TikTok videos which focused on distracted driving and to date this series has received 2.8 million views. Of those who engaged with the series, almost 44% were aged between 18 and 34 years.

I take this opportunity to advise anyone getting behind the wheel of any vehicle today to consider carefully how their actions could impact others and indeed themselves. I urge them to slow down, put their phones away and give their full attention to the road.