Seanad debates

Wednesday, 14 May 2003

If we had the same level of road safety here as in Britain, there would probably be approximately 200 to 220 deaths per annum. If we had Scandinavian levels of road safety, I do not have the exact figures but I believe our road deaths would total approximately 150. I have been driving for roughly 40 years and, if the level of road safety in Scandinavian countries had held sway here, there would be approximately 12,000 people alive who are now dead. That figure is equivalent to the population of a large provincial town. The countries to which I refer are not totalitarian states. They had a commitment, once they reached a moderate level of affluence, to develop a decent infrastructure. We do not have that and will not have it as long as the Government insists, for ideological reasons, that borrowing for infrastructural investment is something to be done reluctantly or incoherently and without a strategy. It will be the first to borrow to pay for bits of things, but it will not have a plan, a philosophy or a timescale and that is a matter of great regret.

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