Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I raise the issue of safety on our rural roads because another family has suffered an unbearable loss this week. Another innocent life has been taken, that of Aoibheann Duffy, an 11-year-old girl from County Kerry who was out for a cycle on a summer evening near her home. We have failed this young girl and her family. We have failed in our duty of care towards people living in rural areas. We have failed because we are willing to tolerate roads that are simply no longer safe for the people living along them.

This is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only in the past 20 or 30 years that our rural roads have become the sole preserve of the car, van and truck. Before that, our roadways were shared and people could, and did, walk and cycle safely on them. Vehicles have got bigger and faster and roads have been widened and designed for speed to the extent that many families are locked inside their front gates, unable to go anywhere unless they do so by car. We have made people in rural Ireland more dependent than ever on cars, with all the dire health and social impacts that go with that. In our towns and cities, we have rightly adopted a hierarchy of road users when we design roads. This hierarchy states that we must satisfy the needs of the most vulnerable first. The order of priority goes from the most vulnerable road user to the least vulnerable. In rural Ireland, perversely, we have, in effect, inversed that hierarchy and it is the fast, powerful vehicle that dominates.

I know the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, has a commitment to active travel and to the health and environmental benefits that travelling under one's own steam brings. He and his colleagues, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, have been starting a revolution in active travel, with unprecedented investment in walking and cycling infrastructure, safe routes to schools and greenways in rural areas. We need to give more attention to our rural roads. Cycling and walking are not solely urban activities. We must afford everyone the opportunity to get the exercise they need to stay healthy. In addition, not everyone wants to, or can, use a car for all their daily mobility needs. Making our rural roads safer to walk and cycle on is the fair and right thing to do for our environment, our health and our society.

We can do more to stop families from experiencing the preventable death of a child on the roads. I want to extend my sympathies to the Duffy family in Kerry and, indeed, to all the families who have lost loved ones in road accidents. One of my own family members was killed by a driver while cycling and I know the hurt and pain of such a loss can persist for decades. In the Netherlands, an active travel revolution was started in the 1970s with the call to "Stop de Kindermoord", which means "stop the child murder". This past year has demonstrated the capacity of the State to act to prevent premature deaths from the coronavirus pandemic. We have stayed at home, worn masks and kept our distance. We do not have to shut down our economy to prevent children from dying on the roads of rural Ireland. We just need to stop, think of the unbearable grief suffered by families and demonstrate the same capacity for action to prevent the premature deaths of children in road accidents.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I thank Deputy Leddin for raising this matter, which I am taking of behalf of the Minister of State for Transport, Deputy Naughton. First, I take this opportunity, on behalf of both the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and the Minister of State, to express our deepest sympathies to the family of Aoibheann Duffy, who was killed in a collision near Abbeydorney on Monday night. Any death on the road is a death too many but we can all agree that the loss of a young child - in this case, only 11 years of age - is desperately sad.

I understand Aoibheann was cycling near her home on Monday when she was struck by a van. This has become an all too familiar story on our roads, particularly in rural Ireland, as Deputy Leddin outlined. While we have made remarkable progress in the field of road safety over the past 20 years and fatalities on Irish roads have reduced dramatically since we first started following a strategic approach to road safety in 1998, deaths and serious injuries among vulnerable road users remain a serious concern. The next road safety strategy, which will run from 2021 to 2030, is being prepared by the Road Safety Authority, RSA, and the programme for Government has committed to focusing the new strategy on protecting vulnerable road users, particularly pedestrians and cyclists.

As the Deputy is aware, rural roads throw up a whole different set of infrastructural and safety challenges compared with roads in more built-up, urban areas. I must make absolutely clear that the improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads is the statutory responsibility of each local authority, in accordance with the Roads Act 1993. Works on those roads, including the maintenance of traffic management systems and the responsibility for setting or amending speed limits, lies with the elected members of the relevant local authority.

The provision of footpaths and cycle lanes also falls under the responsibility of local authorities. Under the regional and local roads grants programme operated by the Department of Transport, provision has been made for local authorities to apply for funding for safety improvement works. It is the responsibility of the local authority to identify and determine the appropriateness of schemes for submission for safety improvement works. The Department also provides a range of publications to local authorities to assist them in promoting safer interaction with road users. These include the Department's updated guidelines for setting and managing speed limits across Ireland, which outline: a range of criteria relating to the setting of speed limits; the traffic management guidelines, which detail the options available to local authorities to facilitate traffic calming measures; and the traffic signs manual, which is a ministerial directive published by the Department of Transport and is the standard for signing and road marking in this country. While the provision of safer infrastructure is critical to bringing down the number of cyclist and pedestrian fatalities, it is clear that this goal cannot be met through infrastructure alone. Protecting the safety of vulnerable road users demands a multifaceted strategy to promote a greater understanding of and a mutual respect between everyone who uses the road, irrespective of the mode of transport.

As the House may recall, the previous Minister with responsibility for transport, Sir Shane Ross, introduced a new law in 2019 making it an offence for motorists to dangerously overtake cyclists. It is the intention that this law, bolstered by widespread RSA education and media campaigns, will lead to a heightened awareness of the importance of sharing road space in a respectful and considerate manner. Nowhere is this respect and awareness more important than on our network of rural roads. Deputy Leddin is correct: as the summer approaches it is so important that people can go out and enjoy our rural areas on whatever mode of transport they choose and should not have to face into these terrible challenges, with speeds reaching sinister and dangerous new levels.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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As the Minister of State has acknowledged, we have made progress on road deaths, and fatalities have decreased significantly in the past decade. Paradoxically, however, by making roads safer for those in cars, vans and trucks, we have inadvertently made them lethal for those who are not in such vehicles. It is a questionable success if it relies on our roads being so dangerous that our young and old are too terrified to walk or cycle along them because of the high risk they bring.

There is one area that could be examined in respect of our rural roads. This year we have budgeted €584 million for the maintenance and upkeep of regional and local roads. Work in this regard is managed and funded through our local authorities. I am aware of arguments that this is necessary investment to achieve a steady state in the condition of our regional roads, but I would argue that if this is a steady state that involves children getting killed while walking and cycling, it is an unacceptable steady state. Most of our regional roads in rural areas are bordered by drainage ditches and hedgerows. There is scope on many if not most regional roads to provide a segregated section for walkers and cyclists. It may require narrowing carriageway widths in some places and taking away parts of ditches but it is very possible and is done in other countries. If we did this, we would provide people living in rural areas with the freedom to leave their front gates in safety. While we maintain and upgrade rural roads with that approximately €500 million annually, we can also make them much safer for children and adults who wish to go for a walk or to hop on a bike.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputy again for raising this matter and for the contribution he made. There are many factors involved in road safety. Vehicle standards, road conditions and, above all, road user and driver behaviour have an impact on how safe our roads are. In just over two decades we have seen a large reduction in the number of fatalities on our roads, from 472 in 1997 to a record low of 138 in 2018. This remarkable transformation was due to many actions by many people and organisations and was achieved against a backdrop of a significant increase in the number of vehicles on our roads. However, we cannot be complacent. As the number of deaths has reduced, it has become harder to get it down further. In 2020 there were 149 deaths, nine more than in 2019, and this happened in spite of an unprecedented drop in traffic volumes as part of that period during the pandemic. Both the RSA and An Garda Síochána have indicated that they will focus on education and enforcement for the remainder of the year. Later this year, the RSA is planning to develop a new road safety campaign that will focus on the safety of rural roads. The campaign will have a particular focus on appropriate measures on excessive speeding by drivers and the need to always expect the unexpected.

I thank Deputy Leddin for the constructive comment he has made and his proposal. The Department should give serious consideration to it. It is something that has been raised in my constituency, where rural communities are proposing such infrastructure on rural verges. This is an opportunity we should seize with additional funding for cycling and walking, which was unprecedented in the most recent budget. It is vitally important we tackle this issue. As already stated, young people and people of all ages should be able to enjoy our rural countryside in safety without vehicles getting faster and bigger. We have a serious challenge ahead but it is important that the Government tackles it.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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I thank the Minister of State for being here to deal so sensitively with this vitally important matter and I thank Deputy Leddin for raising it. I am sure I can say on behalf of the House that we all join the Minister of State and Deputy Leddin in extending our deepest sympathies to the family of Aoibheann Duffy on their agonising loss.