Road Safety: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-17 ============================================================ Joe Conway (IND), Cultural and Educational Panel Tacaím leis an rún atá ardaithe ag Fine Gael. Rinne siad sárjab an t-ábhar seo a chur os ár gcomhair sa Teach seo anocht. Many years ago, I remember watching a little road safety cartoon in the classroom. It lasted four or five minutes. I remember showing it to a third and fourth class on an old projector. Those things have long since disappeared. It involved two characters. One was Mr. Walker, who was a very benign lovely old gentleman. He walked along the streets, picked daisies, patted dogs and spoke to the neighbours. As he went down the street, he found his car parked. He opened the door and looked around very cautiously then sat into the driver's seat and started up the engine. The camera panned in on his face. His face transformed from the Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. He became toothed and angry. This monstrous face sat behind windscreen. The voice-over said that Mr. Walker has now become Mr. Wheeler. With that, he took off at breakneck speed, throwing old grannies to one side and going down the street. I tell the House this story because I wish to make an emphasis on the whole business of driver behaviour, which is at the root of a lot of the problems we have in this country with road safety. This is like teaching your granny to suck eggs, because everybody in this Chamber probably drives and is probably on the road many days each week. Senators know full well that the vast majority of drivers are benign in their impact. They respect the law and move from one place to another without undue hassle or fuss. However, there is a small minority of people who have no concept of what constitutes benign or co-operative road behaviour. They will take any chance that presents itself and break any regulation in order to plough ahead, thereby putting everybody else on the road in a position of discomfort or danger. In the main, we task the Garda Síochána to enforce the laws we have and to address bad driver behaviour. Coming up here this morning, I used the M7 and M9 and I drove at or marginally below the 120 km/h speed limit. On three occasions, I was overtaken at high speed by a BMW, a Porche and an SUV, respectively. Of course, SUVs are sometimes referred to as Chelsea tractors. I knew from looking in my rear-view mirror that these cars were approaching from behind at ridiculous speeds. I would not hazard a guess at what speeds they were doing, but they flashed passed. As they did, the one common thing about them was that they all had yellow rear numberplates, which suggests that they are either from GB or Northern Ireland. Is there any a reciprocal possibility of enforcing our speed limits or driving legislation in the context of the people who drive these vehicles? Are they simply immune because they are from another jurisdiction and are driving in this State? The next thing I want to talk about is average speed cameras that are becoming more widely used in this State. I do not want to refer to specific instances, but we all know the areas of the country where fatalities and road accidents are more likely to occur. They tend to be near the Border. There may be a historical reason for that. When we are investing in speed cameras, should we put them into the areas where the most obvious incidents relating to speeding and bad driver behaviour occur? When I was a relatively young driver, it was not unusual for my mates to boast in the pub that they had driven home with eight or ten pints on board. In my recollection, that did happen. The fact of the matter is that by introducing the relevant legislation, we have almost eradicated drunk-driving or driving under the influence of excess alcohol. The same could be done in the context of speeding. We have a ridiculously low penalty of three points for people who are convicted of driving over the speed limit. The statistics, as best as we can interpret them, indicated that one in three people who get three points go on to get more points. My contention would be that in the context of a first conviction for speeding or using a mobile phone, it is time the number of points was increased to six. After that, I am of the view that we would see an obvious change in driver behaviour. It is like the smoking ban or the ban on smoky coal that Mary Harney brought in. These were unpopular measures. The Government will have to have the cojones to address this matter, because there will be a lot of blowback from people who do not like things being regulated. There are some difficult choices ahead for the Government in the context of road safety. We had a 31% increase in the number of road deaths in the past year. I hope the Government has the cojones to tackle the issue of road safety. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:38+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-17