Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with an awful lot of what has been said, particularly what Deputy Lahart spoke about. We can have the best legislation in the world but if we do not have the capacity to enforce it, it will be worthless. Many have spoken here about the tragedies we have had on the roads recently. We need to ensure the Garda has the capacity it needs to deal with this sort of stuff.

We all welcome the movement made on drug testing. We have to create the conditions to ensure less and less drunk and drug driving happens. There are societal issues there but we need to make sure we do our part across the board. I do not think there is an elected representative who is not contacted about road safety, speeds and so on. We all accept we needed to review the speed limits, particularly on certain roads, but I am not sure we can do it in the catch-all way that is being looked at. A review of this may be needed.

I have brought up a number of issues with the Minister of State. He dealt with TII and we got some answers although the answers are never exactly what we want. There are questions outstanding about TII and Louth County Council. I will have to get an answer on the N53. That is a road that needs to be looked at. There are plans in place to upgrade it and that would need to happen as soon as possible. There are danger issues in this regard. Jimmy Myers and I had engineers from the council out there not so long ago. At some level, what is coming back is it is an enforcement issue but we need to find a means of dealing with that. It is a particularly dangerous piece of road.

The Minister of State has been to the Cooley Peninsula and would have seen a number of schools that have particular issues, such as at Bellurgan and the Bush Post Primary School. While there are some proposals, we have a wider issue in regard to the crash barriers that are needed at Kilcurry and Shelagh national schools. Wicklow has already opted for a periodic 30 km/h speed limit around schools. I think we need to find a better way of dealing with the particular issues that relate to schools.

We could talk forever about road safety. As I have the Minister of State in front of me, I want to raise the issue of the recent serious flooding in the Cooley Peninsula, which has caused much damage to roads. While some short-term mitigation measures were taken and the money was possibly provided by central government, there is an ask to the Department for €1.6 million.

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