Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Eugene Murphy for his invitation. I am terrified of accepting invitations in this House because it causes turmoil. People expect me to keep to those commitments. At some stage, I will visit but I ask the Deputy not to hold me to a date. I would be delighted to see the area in question.

The Deputy is kicking an open door when he talks to me about safety. I hope he will take that as genuine. Road safety is the top priority in my Department in the transport area because of the awful loss of lives. The Deputy will be as aware of the figures as I am and that the number of fatalities rose last year and is rising again this year. This is utterly and totally unacceptable. I have asked TII specifically to identify what it calls collision clusters. The fact that some of the blackspots mentioned by the Deputy have not featured at the top of the lists should be taken as encouraging but I gather there are some up to date statistics that we should look at. I promise the Deputy that if the up to date statistics do justify the treatment to which the criteria already apply, I will ask the authorities to regard this as a priority. It seems that, among the difficulties, safety is the one that really matters.

When one is talking about areas such as Tulsk or other blackspots, the answer is that I will see that they receive the attention they merit. We look forward to new figures. If the Deputy can produce them himself before the local authorities and they are authentic, I will certainly act upon them as soon as I possibly can. His commitment is genuine because I want to see the figures come down. I want to see lives being saved; it is as simple as that. It is imperative. I cannot give a commitment on whether the requirements concerning the N5 and N4 will be included in the capital programme but they will certainly be considered. I can assure the Deputy of that.

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