Laura Harmon (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber. He has a great opportunity to improve road safety for all road users in Ireland as part of his brief.

At the age of 38, I am learning to drive for the first time. I am in the middle of my driving lessons. It is terrifying when I hear about collisions on the South Link Road in Cork and the fatality rates, with 174 people killed on our roads last year. I will probably be in my forties before I am actually on the road because my closest test centre in Wilton has the third-highest waiting list in the country. This is a serious issue that we need to address. There is no acceptable number of fatalities on our roads. Every one of those deaths, which is often preventable, is a tragedy for family members, friends and entire communities. We also need to acknowledge that many more people suffer life-changing injuries as a result of road collisions in this country.

We cannot allow ourselves to think that simply lowering speed limits is a panacea nor are harsher penalties for infringements of those speed limits or of other offences such as drink-driving or phone use. Ultimately the determining factor in the success of these initiatives will be their enforcement. We need to look at the numbers in the Garda traffic corps. Prior to the recession, the corps was 1,300 strong and after the recession we saw a massive drop to approximately 550. Despite many promises over a long time, the numbers have been creeping up and down between 600 and 750. Increasing these numbers will be critical and a big part of the solution.

We also need more real-time data on our roads and we need significant investment in permanent stationary traffic cameras. I acknowledge that is in the programme for Government, which is very welcome. We can talk all we want about penalty points and speed limits. They are all good and necessary measures but what we are really speaking about, and what will actually have an effect, is behavioural change. People need to know they will be punished for infringements of the rules of the road.

Road maintenance is a big issue. The Government is very focused on roads and road building. This is not a negative because the condition of many of our roads is dire. One road I speak about a lot in Cork is in the Lehenaghmore area. A project related to it went out to tender last Friday, which is welcome. I hope its construction will commence this year. It is shocking that some residents in the area have been waiting almost two decades for road safety measures.Last year, I met a mother as I was going door to door. She told me her daughter was knocked down on the first day of her school holidays. She had injuries from the incident that, thankfully, she survived and is well, but it is extremely worrying.

A lot of estates are being built before infrastructure is put in place, so we are ending up with roads that are, perhaps, not suitable for population increases. That is something that needs to be taken into account as part of planning because that particular road in Lehenaghmore I spoke about was essentially built on a 19th century boreen and it is not fit for purpose.

When we talk about road safety, we are talking not just about people in cars but also about cyclists and pedestrians and unlocking more funding for pedestrian crossings. My Labour Party colleague in Cork, Councillor Peter Horgan, has been doing a lot of advocacy on this. He is chair of the transport committee in Cork. We need more pedestrian crossings, and it would be wonderful to see more funding for footpaths unlocked as part of active travel. Pedestrians require safety too and it is worrying to see the number of pedestrians in Cork who tell me they are walking in the middle of the roads because the footpaths do not feel safe.

The RSA must also hand over data to local authorities after collisions as soon as possible. I know there are GDPR issues to be sorted but local authorities need to know where the blackspots are for crashes. We do need to have those data but we cannot ignore the fact that, recently, more than 30 road safety advocacy groups declared no confidence in the RSA and stated it was not fit for purpose. I hope the review of that will be fruitful in terms of subsequent implementation. There is a lot of work to be done and I would welcome further debate on this.