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

I agree with the Deputy. It is about engineering, enforcement and education, but we need to lower the speed limits. Many speed limits give the wrong message to motorists and are too high for the real condition of the roads. It is important we bring down the speed limits. In most urban areas the speed limit should be brought down to 30 km/h from 50 km/h, in many of the non-secondary national roads from 100 km/h to 80 km/h and, on the quieter roads, down to 60 km/h. That is important.

As the Deputy said, however, that needs to be matched by greater enforcement of those speed limits. An Garda Síochána obviously has a key role in that regard. I will give a couple examples of where we are increasing enforcement. Last September, the Minister for Justice announced a 20% increase in GoSafe camera hours for the latter months of last year, from approximately 7,500 hours up to 9,000 hours of speed limit monitoring. Similarly, we are introducing new average speeds. At approximately three sites, we are testing a new average speed camera system that will measure average speeds over a distance, and there will be nine new static cameras. We also need more enforcement.

See this speech in context