Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 8:

In page 16, between lines 28 and 29, to insert the following:“Safety of Road Infrastructure
14. In accordance with Section 17 of the Roads Act, 1993, the overall responsibility for the planning and supervision of works for the construction and maintenance of national roads shall include safety. The Minister may, by regulations request the National Roads Authority to examine the safety aspects of local authority planning proposals for national roads and their approach roads and to consult with the Road Safety Authority on the contribution of infrastructure to improved road safety.”.

The Minister has proposed rafts of measures to deal with the driver side of things and we support him. We have also had some discussion on vehicles. What about roads? Unless I am mistaken, the legislation that set up the Road Safety Authority referred to vehicles, drivers and driver testing but did not refer to roads standards. When the National Roads Authority was established, there was reference to it.

The purpose of my amendment is to allow the Minister to say that accidents are sometimes caused by the state of the roads. We would allow in this amendment that: "The Minister may, by regulations request the National Roads Authority to examine the safety aspects of local authority planning proposals for national roads and their approach roads and to consult with the Road Safety Authority on the contribution of infrastructure to improved road safety." As the Minister will know, there are concerns about the extension of villages and bungalow bliss onto national secondary routes, in particular. It may be that when the school bus calls or bread vans deliver to a house that is part of a ribbon development, there should be a safety dimension by the NRA, as the authority that appears to have the legislative powers to do so, and the RSA to say this kind of planning has an unsatisfactory safety dimension to it. Some documents by the NRA state a concern that what it might need for future road improvements is being intruded upon by county councils changing planning laws. There are also concerns about ramps from normal roads to go over motorways and the ribbon developments that run along such roads.

Roads are estimated to account for 3% of single vehicle accidents, which is a significant figure. I believe 37% of all fatal accidents are single vehicle ones, and the road has been deemed the contributing factor in some cases. Does the Minister's safety package include safe roads? We know the safety record of motorways is a dramatic improvement compared with the previous road, for example, between Dublin and Dundalk. The safety record of dual carriageways is much better than for single carriageways. As the Minister will know from the statistics, many accidents involve a car on a relatively minor road. Could we make such roads safer, could the Minister have an input into that, and should that influence planning decisions for ribbon developments along sections of motorway ramps, sections of the national primary route network and, apparently quite seriously, the national secondary route network?

If roads are part of the problem, do we have solutions? That is why the amendment was tabled.