Govt 'has reneged on road safety promises'
The Government has reneged on several promises on road safety while the weekly death toll mounts, the Dáil heard today.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny claimed the Government’s last eight years in office had turned the State into a country of road carnage by failing to implement proposals on penalty points offences, speed cameras and extra gardaí.
“The result of all this inactivity and inability to cope by the Government is that the road deaths unfortunately continue at a terrifyingly high rate,” he said.
“A total of 172 people have lost their lives on our roads this year – an increase of 12% on 2004.
“After almost 10 years, and after giving a litany of promises that your Government will take some action to implement the litany of broken promises that are on the statute books,” he added.
Mr Kenny said the Government had promised in 1998 to roll out speed cameras within two years but only three out of 20 cameras in the greater Dublin area are currently operating at any one time.
The Government also promised to introduce 69 penalty points offences by the end of 2003, but only three have been enacted two years later.
It pledged to set up a garda traffic corps in 2002.
He further claimed that an average of one officer in each garda station has been trained in motorist breathalyser kits and random breathtesting had been earmarked for 1999.
No legislation has been introduced to ban the use of mobile phones in cars despite being promised soon after it was announced in 2001, he said.
Motorcyclists take up 2% of traffic but are involved in 15% of road accidents.
Mr Kenny further claimed that only 34 extra gardaí had been recruited this year.
“Is this not an admission that the transport and environment ministers have fallen down on their jobs completely,” he asked.
“Is this not a complete failure on behalf of the Government and the environment and transport ministers to implement systems and standards that would ensure all road-users comply in the interests of public safety.”
Tánaiste Mary Harney, who was deputising for Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, insisted that road deaths were “substantially reduced” since the late 1990s and motor insurance was down by over 30%.
