Road Safety: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2024-04-17
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Mick Barry (PBP), Cork North-Central

There is huge concern about the increased number of deaths on our roads with many of those who have died being young. Is it an issue of individual responsibility or of society not doing what could and should be done? Important issues of personal responsibility are involved. No one is denying that, but if I read the comments made by some Ministers in recent days carefully, I see an attempt to downplay the responsibility of society, the Government and State intervention in this.
For example, there is currently a €5 billion backlog of maintenance work on rural roads, that is a legacy of huge cutbacks in the austerity era. In addition, as society emerged from the austerity era, in a Government led by Fine Gael with former Deputy Shane Ross as Minister for Transport, budgets were cut by 15% and funding for local authorities to do work of this kind was cut by 30%. I agree with Deputy Paul Murphy's criticisms of the RSA, but I note that it asked the Minister for Transport for €6 million last year for road safety advertising and was turned down. Spinning the situation yesterday, it was announced that there is a €3 million budget being allocated after failures on the Government front in recent years.
I do not have time to develop the point that was raised about car culture. A big part of that is sports utility vehicles, SUVs. SUV sales are 13% per head of population above the EU average. Every time I see one of the big ones where people are high up with the bullbars on the front so that if there is a hit, it will be the person who is hit that will be injured, rather than the car being damaged. I do not have time to develop the point, but I want to come back to it soon.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-04-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-04-17