Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I absolutely agree with Deputy Troy that road safety has to be our first priority.

It is everyone's first priority. Particularly as public representatives, and also in our own private lives, we have all seen the tragedy that road deaths and serious injuries bring. We have to design our transport system, first and foremost, to make sure that we reduce that. I will meet the board of TII. I met them last year and I will be meeting them at the next board meeting. One of the key questions I will be putting to them is what role they can play in terms of helping us reduce that, particularly given the increased fatalities and injuries that we have seen in recent years. That requires a combination of measures. Yes, it is about designing and building new roads, but it is also about changing design on existing roads, changing speed limits and patterns of behaviour. There is a whole range of different initiatives we need to take to improve road safety.

I want to make one other point to give confidence to the public, the Deputy and others. The Deputy mentioned that there was a significant underspend in the roads programme or spending on roads. I do not think that will be the case at the end of the year. We have an agency which is very good at building roads and has significant engineering capability. We will spend our budget fully. The problem we have is that that budget cannot meet all the needs.

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