Road Safety: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-17 ============================================================ Joanne Collins (SF), Agricultural Panel I welcome this evening's discussion on road safety. It is a very important issue. It is not just an abstract policy. It is something that touches every family, every parish and every community in this country. Nowhere is that truer than in rural Ireland. For decades, we have made real progress. Since the first road safety strategy was published, the number of fatalities on our roads has fallen steadily, reaching its lowest point in 2021. That progress did not happen by accident. It happened because of sustained investment, better infrastructure, safer vehicles, education and, crucially, visible enforcement. However, in recent years, that progress has begun to reverse. Three of the last four years have seen an increase in road deaths and serious injuries. Behind every statistic is a human being - a neighbour, a friend, a son or a daughter who never made it home. In a rural area, the impact of a single fatality can ripple through an entire community. Rural roads are different. They are narrower, less forgiving and often poorly lit. They carry a mix of fast-moving traffic, agricultural vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians and now e-scooters yet rural roads are too often policed as if they were urban streets or, what is worse, they are not policed at all. The data is stark. According to the RSA, between 85% and 88% of road fatalities occur on rural roads. Even more striking is the fact that approximately 73% of serious injuries also occur on rural roads. These are not marginal differences. They tell us clearly where the greatest risk lies. Many people in rural Ireland will tell you the same thing. They can drive on rural roads for days, weeks and often months without seeing a Garda checkpoint or patrol car. That absence is noticed and, unfortunately, it changes behaviour. That is why enforcement matters. This motion rightly highlights speeding, distraction, intoxicated driving and failure to wear seat belts as the main causes of road deaths but laws on paper do not save lives unless people believe they will be enforced. This brings me to the central failing that we must address, namely, the collapse in Garda roads policing numbers. At their peak, there were over 1,000 gardaí dedicated to roads policing. Today, that figure has fallen by roughly 40%. This reduction has not happened because our roads have become safer or quieter. In fact, rural roads remain the most dangerous places to travel in this State. This issue has been raised repeatedly, including by my colleague Deputy Matt Carthy, who has warned that recruitment and retention failures within An Garda Síochána are directly undermining front-line policing capacity, including roads policing. That warning should concern each and every one of us here. The consequences are particularly stark in rural areas. A single Garda unit may be covering a vast geographic area, responding not only to traffic incidents, but to all policing demands in the area. That means fewer checkpoints, less visibility and slower responses when gardaí need to get to the site of a collision. This motion makes many sensible calls. It calls for safer speed limits, better infrastructure and education in our schools. However, all of these must be backed by a renewed commitment to roads policing. That means a clear time-bound plan to restore and expand Garda roads policing numbers with dedicated resources, modern equipment and a focus on deployment in rural areas, not just urban centres. It also means recognising the reality of rural life. For many people, a car is not a choice but a necessity. Public transport alternatives are limited. A lot of the time, they are non-existent. This places an even greater responsibility on the State to ensure rural roads are safe, well maintained and policed. I also stress that this is not about punishment for its own sake. High-visibility policing is one of the most effective deterrents we have. It changes behaviour before the tragedy ever occurs. It reassures communities and supports the vast majority of road users that rightly do the right thing every day. We owe it to the families who have suffered. We owe it to the emergency services who have to respond to these fatalities in the aftermath. It is a good Bill. We have covered it in the transport committee for the last couple of weeks and we will be for the next couple of weeks. It affects everyone, whether one is a vehicle user, a pedestrian or a cyclist. Road safety has to be the bottom line of every single meeting and every agenda that we ever do. We can get it down. We just need to get the right measures in place. We need to get the road policing back up. We do need that deterrent. I know, as well as everybody in this room, if you thought you had the run of the road and you are never going to get caught or there will never be a checkpoint, you are going to pick the phone up if you really need to. You are going to go that few miles ahead of the speed limit to get somewhere faster. It is the deterrent that there is a possibility of getting those penalty points or fine. We need to have that deterrent, not just as a punishment but to get people back in line and to show that there is a reason that we have speed limits and why we wear seatbelts. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as seatbelts. You could put five or six into the back seat of the car and go wherever you wanted. Nothing was ever said. We have come such a huge way when it comes to road safety that we just need to make sure that it is enforced where is needs to be enforced. --- 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