National Vehicle and Driver File, Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Darren O'Rourke (SF), Meath East

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. Road safety is incredibly important and too many of the important indicators are going in the wrong direction. In Meath, for example, people are telling me the same thing again and again, and I know it myself: you never see a roads policing unit. Motorists can go for months or more likely years without encountering a Garda checkpoint or traffic control. That absence has consequences. When there is no fear of getting caught, dangerous driving becomes normalised. Behaviours such as speeding, mobile phone use, dangerous overtaking, and drink and drug driving thrive in the vacuum left by declining enforcement. The road safety experts are clear, as I heard when I was a member of the transport committee. Visible enforcement is one of the most effective deterrents we have and the Government has failed to resource it.
There is also the state of our roads. Across Meath, motorists are navigating broken and deteriorating surfaces, dangerous junctions, inadequate signage and long-standing black spots. Rural communities in particular carry a disproportionate burden of serious and fatal collisions yet they are expected to live with roads that are themselves a hazard. The road maintenance backlog is growing. Local authority funding is stretched beyond breaking point and this Bill does not address any of it. There is not one measure to fix a dangerous junction and not one euro for road repairs. Where is the alternative? For too many people in Meath there simply is not one. We have a complete lack of appropriate, sufficient and working public transport. Towns, including very large towns and villages, are left without reliable bus or rail connections, forcing people into cars often on roads that are neither safe nor fit for purpose. We cannot talk to people about road safety while offering them no viable way to leave the car at home.
While I welcome a number of the sensible and long-awaited provisions of this Bill, we have to look at the issue of enforcement. We need more roads police and roads policing. We need greater funding for roads maintenance and repair. Systems, of course, should talk to each other, and that is welcome. Of course, personal responsibility is hugely important in all of this. Some of the issues I have mentioned do not fall under the Minister of State's remit but I would ask him to work with his ministerial colleagues, particularly in the Department of justice, on these areas.
Another area that falls under the Minister of State's remit needs direct attention. As my party's spokesperson on education, I want to talk about the need for a standard and proactive approach to traffic calming at schools. When I was my party's spokesperson on transport, the safe routes to school programme was introduced. While it is excellent and very welcome, it is too slow and it is underfunded. Different schools have different approaches. Too many schools are left without important, and I would say essential, traffic-calming and child-protecting infrastructure. Dealing with local authorities is infuriating. There appear to be huge discretion and flexibility but there is no rhyme or reason when going from school to school.
One school has huge intervention, while another school in a similar or even worse setting has nothing at all. The local authority, in my experience, defends that position and contradiction. It makes no sense to me. We need guidelines and design handbooks for traffic calming at schools and we need a comprehensive plan for every single school. This, along with some of the measures the Minister of State is proposing here, will help.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17