Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Section 81 of the Road Traffic Act provides for the use of camera apparatus to capture the constituent of an offence in the case of a number of offences under the Road Traffic Acts. Failure to obey a red light is a contravention of Article 30 of the road traffic regulations of 1997, and these regulations are made under section 35 of the 1994 Act. The offence of not obeying a red light is therefore an offence under section 35 of the 1994 Act and is therefore covered by the provisions of section 81 of the 2010 Act. As a consequence, I am informed that the law is already clear in providing for the use of cameras to provide evidence of violation of red light rules.

The Deputy also referred in her question to an update following an appearance at the Committee of Public Accounts, where I believe the Deputy was engaging with one of my officials on this issue in respect of the road safety strategy, how we can effectively implement BusConnects, the wider deployment around public transport, and establishing a structure to deal with this. I believe the National Transport Authority favour the overall direction around camera-based enforcement being fleshed out in terms of how we deal with that, inclusive of red light running. We intend to implement that in a more coherent way and that is what the working group will do. There is the wider operational piece, which is important, together with the investment around that, which the working group will also be dealing with.

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