Mr. Peter Collins:

I want to respond to Senator Ruane and Deputy Pringle on the enforcement and education pieces. The education piece through the RSA, An Garda Síochána and everyone else has been going on a long time and we are all aware of it. Some of us with young kids see a lot of it as well. Parallel to the education, however, there are many people, as the Deputy said, who will remember receiving a ticket for speeding or otherwise on a section of road and will slow down. Enforcement is very important. It hammers things home and supports the education. It shows we are educating people on this but that there are consequences. If there are no consequences, people do not care. They will run the gauntlet, take the risk and park in the cycle lane for two minutes. They will speed down the road because they are late or in a hurry, and if there are no consequences, they will continue to do that.

Somebody mentioned impunity. One good example of evidence of enforcement is the average speed cameras on the new M7, which are also in the Dublin Port tunnel with 99% compliance. Before speed cameras were introduced on the M7, speeding compliance was about 60%, so about 40% were consistently breaking the speed limits. That improved once they were installed. It improved from 60% to 89% before they were active, and once they were activated, that compliance increased beyond 90%. It is very clear that, along with the education and telling people to behave and how to behave, enforcement is very important to get the message across. If there is no penalty, there is no crime, there are no consequences, and people will continue to do it until they get caught and there are consequences. Both points were well made and I think enforcement should follow hand in hand with the education piece.