Road Safety: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-17 ============================================================ Nessa Cosgrove (LAB), Labour Panel Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. I am going to talk briefly about the hierarchy of vulnerable road users. I welcome the debate today. It is great to have it. I welcome the Minister of State here. I am also a member of the transport committee. We have been discussing road safety over the last couple of weeks. We are getting an insight into more vulnerable road users in particular. That is what I am going to talk about. Vulnerable road users are simultaneously the least likely to cause other road users harm and the most likely to suffer harm themselves. I will talk about systems that are put in place. These are recommendations that have come from cyclists, people we have heard from on the committee, and motorcyclists. It is continuing on. The witnesses that are appearing before us are really informed and are giving us a good idea of protections for them as vulnerable road users. The safe systems approach to road safety shifts responsibility from maintaining his or her own safety away from exclusively the individual user to the system that designs and constructs the roads. I know this has come up as part of the motion. This can be especially but not exclusively relevant in urban areas and village centres, where the proportion of pedestrians and cyclists can be higher. It makes most sense to protect the most vulnerable where they are the most prevalent. There are seven key priority areas, four of which are particularly relevant to vulnerable road users. These are safe roads and roadsides and working with the local authorities. I am glad that the Sinn Féin amendment that I support about sharing information around collisions has been accepted in order that the design teams within the local authorities are able to adapt accordingly. I raise safe speeds and the Love 30 campaign. I was disappointed to hear that it is not in the Minister of State's gift any more to implement the limit within local authorities, that it is going to be a by-law within local authorities to implement the Love 30 campaign. At one stage, I thought it was in the Minister of State's gift, that he would be able to implement this safety measure. It has been proven that if a car user is going at 30 km/h and hits a pedestrian, one in ten pedestrians will die. If it is 50 km/h, five in ten pedestrians or cyclists will die. If it is 60 km/h, it is nine in ten. They are stark. The Love 30 campaign is a campaign that might be worth examining again to keep it in the Minister of State's gift rather than by-laws for local authorities because as the Minister of State is aware himself, some local authorities will do it and some will not. Another one is safe road use. I know we have come a long way on this. It is about education and training. I was particularly struck by motorcyclists at the last Oireachtas committee meeting. Motorcyclists are very good drivers. They made very good suggestions that motorways could be part of the driving test. They can see big collisions where people are completely blinded to motorcyclists, particularly on motorways. I have suggestions from them. I know a report will be coming out from that, but these are suggestions from them. It was said nach bhfuil aon rud as an áireamh - that nothing is off the table. Would it be a possibility that there might be a possibility of a single ombudsman for road safety, who could co-ordinate safety improvements and improve the performance of the RSA? That might be a good place to start. The RSA's brief is massive between NCTs and driver's licences. If something else was looking at road safety in particular, it might be an idea. --- 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