Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

I will deal with facts. The European Transport Safety Council, ETSC, report, covering 29 states, including all European Union member states, was published last week and evaluates the progress made towards achieving the EU target of halving road deaths by 2010. The report is based on data provided by member states for the period 2001-06. It measures performance in two ways, namely, road deaths per million population in 2006 and the percentage decrease or increase in road deaths over the five-year period between 2001 and 2006. Using the first measure, the number of road deaths per million population, Ireland is ranked 12th from the top and thus in the top half of the table. This is hardly, as Fine Gael claims, one of the worst in Europe. Nevertheless, our ranking is still too low and we will try in the next road safety strategy to further improve our position.

Using the second measure, Luxembourg tops the table on improvements in road safety performance, followed by France, Portugal and Switzerland, while Lithuania is ranked 29th and is classified as the worst performer. In this table, Ireland is ranked 20th overall or 18th among EU member states.

The Fine Gael motion cites an increase of 35% in road fatalities in the past two months compared with the same period last year as proof of a negative trend. While any road fatality is a death too many, it is wrong to distort figures in this way.

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