Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to go back to Mr. Waide’s most recent comment on analysing the raison d'etre of the RSA and how it is constituted. I thank him for that comment because that is ultimately what I want to raise here today. I wish to point out that the way in which the RSA is established and funded is fundamentally flawed. I am not questioning for a moment the individual commitment of Mr. Waide and his team to road safety. I am pointing out that because of the way in which the RSA is constituted legally and because of the way in which it is funded, it is never going to be able to get to the heart of what needs to happen here in terms of improving road safety in this country. That is why I am asking this question today. Hopefully that analysis will be as robust as it needs to be, and will arrive at a point at which we will be able to put in place some sort of entity whose sole focus is making Irish roads safer.

I have two final questions. The Newstalk journalist, Eoghan Murphy, did some excellent analysis back in 2022 in which he said that 1,700 cyclists were hospitalised due to crashes in 2021. Nearly 200 of those were children aged under nine. I argue that the causation of road deaths and serious injury needs proper analysis every time by trained in-house statisticians and in-house public health experts. Are the results of coroners’ inquests examined by a medical team in the RSA or those contracted to the RSA to ascribe patterns in causation and to develop strategies to address those patterns and reasons for those incessant injuries, year-in, year-out? Vision Zero in Sweden was actually led by a doctor who was trained in public health. Does the RSA have anybody in its ranks with expertise in public health?