Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent) | Oireachtas source

To an increasing number of people, this Government is making the issues of road safety and the criminalisation of road users, especially drivers, almost identical but they are not. We know from the National Household Travel Survey that almost seven in ten, or 69%, of all road trips are made by car. In that context, the number of safety issues that can be attributed to the careless actions of drivers is extremely low. If anything, more of the safety issues that arise can be attributed to poor road conditions, low visibility, overgrown hedgerows, as well as poor road lining and marking. More funding needs to be put into our local authorities. I commend the staff of our local authorities, particularly the staff in Laois and Offaly with whom I am familiar, who do a fantastic job given that they are up against it in terms of funding and trying to stretch funding to make sure roads are catered for and prioritised.

Despite this and despite the fact that road safety should be a very high priority, as my colleagues and I have pointed out in this House, in budget 2024 only €1.2 billion was allocated for our road network. This represents a substantial decrease of almost €200 million on the previous year's allocation of €1.375 billion. I fail to understand the rationale for cutting the funding for roads. Should safety not be a priority for the Minister for Transport? I ask the Minister to look at this immediately and to increase the roads funding in the context of road safety and those issues that need to be addressed throughout this State. Our local authorities need more funding to make our roads safer.

There are also safety issues related to cycling, pedestrian and integrated travel measures. A recent Offaly County Council briefing to Oireachtas Members highlighted the ongoing need to invest in projects such as the Tullamore bike hire share scheme, the safer routes to schools cycling strategy, and footpath improvements. The problem is that funding for these projects is not always available and is precarious at best because it is not multi-annual funding. That is the problem. Local authorities often cannot get to these projects because there is just not enough funding.

I acknowledge that funding has been provided this year for the Birr distributor northern road project under the specific improvement grant scheme, but not before time. That scheme has been awaited for years. I also welcome the funding for the L1014 in Walsh Island village. I advocated for safety improvements in Walsh Island. I met with the local people and the council engineer to try to ensure funding was available and priority was given to Walsh Island. I also welcome the works on the R420 Portarlington to Clonygowan road at Derreen, but again they are long overdue. There are many other roads that are being forgotten.

We need to see the kind of investment we have seen in Walsh Island, Birr and Portarlington in terms of the R420 continue. At the same time, we need to see less of an attempt to throw all of the blame for road safety issues back onto the motorist because that is just not the case.

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