I am sharing time with Deputy Lawlor. As we are discussing this issue today, I am thinking of Fiona Holland, who was a teacher in Scoil Maelruain's Senior National School in Old Bawn in my constituency. She tragically passed away last week following a road accident in Terenure. Fiona played a huge role in her community and was loved by her students. I know what a huge impact her loss has been and will be on her community. My thoughts today are with her family and friends and the staff and pupils in Scoil Maelruain. We are going in the wrong direction when it comes to road safety and have been for some time. We made a lot of progress in the early 2000s and 2010s, but somewhere along the line we seem to have got complacent and we are seeing a reversal of the trend. We need to take a holistic approach when it comes to road safety. It involves a number of overlapping elements, including planning, investment, road infrastructure and design, public transport provision, rural connectivity, driver behaviour, the overall coherence of Government policy and, of course, enforcement of the rules of the road and the realistic prospect that dangerous driving will be caught. I have long said that traffic cameras have a pivotal role to play, particularly in terms of influencing driver behaviour. To be fair, the Minister of State has acknowledged on a number of occasions that driver behaviour has increasingly become an issue, but it is in that context that I find the whole safety camera strategy just a little underwhelming. Not only are there serious weaknesses in and omissions from the strategy, there is also a striking lack of ambition. The strategy itself admits that speeding remains widespread on Irish roads. It cites RSA research showing that 77% of drivers speed and that a majority of motorists consider modest speeding as being socially acceptable. That is pretty alarming given the trends in road deaths here. The strategy also acknowledges the proven effectiveness of camera enforcement. It cites evidence showing that average speed cameras can reduce fatal and serious injury collisions by up to 56%. If the evidence is that strong, why is the strategy so timid? Why, after years of rising fatalities on our roads, are we dealing with a document that appears to be more concerned with governance charts than administrative structures? The former have a role to play but are not more important than measurable outcomes. The strategy repeatedly promises future consideration of further measures instead of immediate concrete delivery. One of the clearest examples of this is the continued absence of any meaningful progress on seat belt and mobile phone detection cameras. The Government has repeatedly stated that these technologies are being considered. When members of the Opposition have asked questions about timelines or implementation, however, we have been told to wait for this National Safety Camera Strategy. The strategy has arrived, but it provides virtually no clarity. The document merely states that mobile phone and seat belt detection cameras may be introduced in future once legislation is in place. There is no timeline. There is no implementation roadmap, no legislative schedule and no delivery target. There is nothing. At a time when distracted driving has become one of the greatest dangers on our roads, the Government is still stuck at the stage of consideration. We know the reality. We see motorists every day scrolling through their phones at traffic lights, texting and watching Netflix on motorways. People are driving while visibly distracted, and we have got these TV-like displays in newer cars that add to the mix. We know the devastating consequences that driver distraction can cause. Likewise, seat-belt non-compliance continues to contribute to deaths and catastrophic injuries on our roads. I note that the strategy says its focus is primarily on cameras to detect speeding, people running red lights and committing offences relating to bus lanes, but we need a holistic approach to road safety. I cannot get my head around why mobile phone use and seat belt non-compliance would not be included, particularly when the technology is available and when we know the impact of those offences. The absence of any meaningful targets or performance indicators is a major weakness. For a strategy that references Vision Zero and reducing the number of fatalities, it is astonishing how little measurable ambition is included. It says nothing about how many cameras we need or how many we hope to have by a certain date. If, for example, we were to have a similar number to Sweden, we would need approximately 430 traffic cameras nationwide. There is nothing in the strategy about how we will measure its success or failure. There are no concrete deployment targets, no annual benchmarks, no performance indicators and no measurable timelines for expansions. Basically, there are no means by which we can hold the Minister of State to account. Instead, we are given vague references to incremental progress and modelling exercises. The closest the strategy gets to setting a target for cameras is where it states "it could be feasible to aim to implement 10-20 new camera locations each year initially ... [while appreciating] that ... other European countries have considerably more cameras." That is about as weak an ambition as I can imagine. At that rate, comprehensive national coverage would take decades. Without clear key performance indicators, KPIs, the Government will always be able to claim the strategy is progressing regardless of outcomes. We need measurable targets and to monitor performance that we can say that the cameras are seeing success and changing driver behaviour, if speeding is down or if the number of people break red lights reduces. Unfortunately, we will not know that based on the model that is being outlined in this strategy. Under this strategy, a number of new roles are assigned to local authorities. The strategy states that local authorities will help identify sites, conduct feasibility assessments, liaising with landowners and support implementation, but where is the discussion of resources and funding? Presumably, these new responsibilities will require new staff, but there is no mention of that in the strategy. Local authorities across Ireland are already overstretched. Many engineering and roads departments are operating under severe staffing pressures already. Councils are being asked to deliver active travel projects, housing infrastructure, flood mitigation, public realm improvements and road maintenance. That is all great, but it is all being done with finite resources. The strategy casually assigns additional responsibilities without explaining how these responsibilities will be supported. We are fully behind greater decentralisation, but what we are increasingly seeing is responsibility being decentralised while resources are not. Local authorities are essential partners in road safety delivery but council workers will be looking at this plan and thinking how the hell are they supposed to take on these new responsibilities if they are not getting any additional investment or staffing. One of the more confusing aspects of this strategy is the extraordinary lack of clarity around governance and institutional reform. The document repeatedly refers to phases 1 and 2 implementation. Nowhere are those phases defined in terms of timelines. We have no clarity on when phase 1 will end and phase 2 will begin. We have no measurables, so we do not know what sort of milestones need to be achieved in phase 1 before we move to phase 2. To add to the confusion, the strategy splits responsibility for safety cameras across two public agencies, namely Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, and an as-yet-unnamed agency, and the Garda, with these different bodies managing various elements of the system. This is basically a rejection of the international evidence and best practice guidance that a well-resourced centralised authority is needed. It is further complicated by the strategy working group recommending, in the long term, the establishment of a new public body to achieve the full ambition of the strategy and take on the responsibility of both public bodies that will be responsible for cameras in the short term. I do not know how this reconciles with the Minister's row-back on the commitment to establish a new road safety authority to take over certain functions of the RSA. Is this a row-back on the row-back? What will it mean for the RSA into the future? This strategy proposes the potential creation of another major body in the road safety space without any meaningful explanation of how it will fit within the wider institutional landscape.

Sentiment score: 0.02