Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I welcome his statements and all the Government initiatives to allow everybody who goes out on our roads to get home safely. As every Senator has outlined, the issues are, in order: speeding; distracted driving; drunk driving and drug driving; poor road conditions; a lack of pedestrian infrastructure; and inadequate vehicle safety features, especially in older vehicles that lack safety features like air bags. These are followed by reckless driving, weather conditions and enforcement.

Senator Noonan just brought it all home in terms of the fatalities that are brought to people’s doors. In 2014, I was a councillor and one thing I picked up on was the death of a six-year-old boy in Kilkenny, Jake Brennan. What was called Jake’s legacy came into force and his parents rolled it out, with all speed limits in estates changed to 30 km/h in 2017. That was very welcome and it has saved lives.

I make no apology to anybody for the new road speed limit reductions. They have to be welcomed, rolled out and enforced. In 2022, there were 155 deaths but 181 deaths in 2023. That is too many. It comes down to driving behaviour. Many people are going away from the fact that we can introduce all sorts of measure, but driver behaviour is causing 99% of these accidents.

I drove up on the M7 this morning. There was an average speed camera and no one was breaking the rules. The more surveillance we have out there, including via cameras, and the more penalties, the more people will slow down.

I was in Australia last year. The fine for a passenger being caught without a seat belt is $400 and the driver gets three penalty points. Therefore, a person will not be caught a second time. People will not break the law again.

I ask the Minister of the State about the roll-out of safety officers. I was chairperson of the operations on the road operations SPC in Kerry County Council and was proud to introduce the role of safety officer within the county, but where the Department is concerned, what role does the safety officer play?

Safe routes to school were referenced. In Kerry County Council, it is hoped we are preventative in many measures. We have a certain budget allocation from our roads programme that we can apply to speed limit reduction signs and flashing amber lights outside schools. We can personally do that through our council allocations in Kerry. I do not think there is any other council that does that to save kids going to school, save parents dropping their kids to school and save people picking them up.

Finally, we are all looking for remedies to this issue. It has got to a certain point. My children are starting on the roads now. We do not want parents to get that phone call or that knock on the door at 3 a.m.

Being distracted at 50 km/h or 80 km/h can be fatal. Being distracted at 120 km/h is definitely fatal. Why can we not install speed reducers in new vehicles? We are selling vehicles that can do up to 200 km/h or 220 km/h. Why? There is no need to have these on the market because you cannot do that speed anywhere in the country, unless you go to Mondello Park. I ask that the Government clue into this and see whether there is anything we can do. If the speed limit in the country is no greater than 120 km/h, why are we selling vehicles to kids, parents and everyone else that can go in excess of 220 km/h or 240 km/h? We saw an accident over the weekend where the car was supposedly going more than 100 km/h over the speed limit, which was totally wrong.

I thank the Minister of State for his statement and I look forward to working with him.