Road Safety: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-17 ============================================================ Mike Kennelly (FG), Labour Panel I welcome the Minister of State. Tonight, our support has to go on the motion brought forward by my colleagues. Everyone fully supports this. The two biggest safety issues going on in the country right now are road safety and online safety for our children. In the term of this Government, we must come down hard on offenders that are causing distress to people online and using our roads. Because of the safety on our roads, our communities and every person who uses them demand urgent, practical and sustained action. We must accelerate the introduction of Grace's law to ban scramblers and similar vehicles in public spaces. Every Member of this House has seen the consequences recently in the intimidation in our public parks, injuries, and, unfortunately, the fatality of Grace. Communities are living under constant disruption. At the same time, we need a comprehensive review of the e-scooter regulations that have been mentioned, particularly the minimum age and maximum speeds. Events like a 13-year-old being caught with an e-scooter that can do 55 km/h without a helmet have to stop. A 14-year-old buying an e-scooter without the proper ID has to stop. A bugbear of mine is our driving test. It genuinely is not fit for purpose. A learner driver could currently pass a test after performing a three-point turn in a quiet housing estate in the middle of an afternoon during a driving test. That does not prepare anyone for real-world driving. We still prohibit learners from motorways yet expect them to use these the moment they pass. It is crazy stuff. We still do not require night-time driving experience, despite the very difficult and different challenges it presents. A modern driving test must reflect modern driving realities, especially the dangers that are out there. We need a national road safety campaign that speaks plainly about where the real dangers lie on our local, regional and national roads. This has been said and I will quickly say it. I drive from north Kerry up here. I get on a local road, a regional road, a national road, and I get on the motorway and get it back into the city. I have seen it all in the last 12 months, including the recklessness of some motorists. They just do not care. Transport Infrastructure Ireland's collision rate analysis constantly shows that local roads record the highest collision rate due to narrow widths, faded road markings and sight-lines. I welcome the funding today. I hope it goes to these specific roads I mentioned because of the sight-lines and that. Even the RSA states that for every one fatality, there are ten serious injuries. Out of 190 fatalities, there are 1,900 serious injuries. Families are getting destroyed. On what Senator Collins said, there was an incident last night in Abbeyfeale, just over the border from me, at 8 p.m., where a car turned upside down going down the street in Abbeyfeale. That was at 8 o'clock in the evening. The car was not travelling at 10 km/h or 15 km/h; it was travelling at high speed through a town. As councillors, one thing we always looked for was speed ramps - I could go on and on - entering every village and town. If a speed ramp was on the verge of that speed limit sign coming into that town, that would not have happened last night and it probably would have prevented a fatality. That person is in hospital. I could go on. I really welcome what the Government is doing, but it has to be a huge priority to get it all right. --- 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