Mr. Drew Harris:

As cars become more advanced, we are seeing innovations that the motor industry is considering. Certainly, the recent conference on road safety in Dublin covered a lot of what may be done. Part of this can be regulating speeds and passengers in the vehicle. Some vehicles will not proceed unless everybody is properly strapped in with a seatbelt.

For our part, a lot of the improvement in our road safety is concentrated on speed, for one. I know other nations in Europe have concentrated on speed in particular. I know we have the five lifesaver offences. There is particular concentration on speed in Scandinavian countries. Less speed means that the collisions are less severe in any case and perhaps more survivable.

The Leas-Chathaoirleach is right to highlight the issue of serious injury. Serious injury collisions have been diminishing since 2018 and so we are in the strange position of having fewer serious injuries but more fatalities. That is a consequence of speed, going by the statistics in terms of who has been killed on the roads and in what circumstances. Ms Hilman and I review every fatal road traffic collision. I receive a report on every fatal road traffic collision and have a good sense then of the driver behaviours.

More engineering in terms of vehicles would certainly help. We are looking at a substantial increase in the safety camera network in terms of static road safety cameras. I have asked Ms Hilman to work up a business case. We set a target of 100 additional road safety cameras, because we know that-----