I wish I was here to welcome this with a sense of hope but this is not a strategy. It is a shortlist of options. People are dying on our roads. We are one of the only states in Europe that is going backwards in relation to road safety. In 2025, 21 people tragically died on the roads of Cork. In 2024, 18 died and seven died in 2021. These are horrific figures. Each of these people left behind a distraught family heartbroken with grief. Some families never come back from the heartache of a death like this. At the same time, the Minister of State has come in here today to provide five options. That is not a strategy. It is nothing short of an insult to those families and those who have died. We want to see real action and so do they. They want to see a real strategy that goes further and will help to prevent deaths. They do not want options. They want action. This so-called strategy is 34 pages long and sets out five options. This could have been written at a rate of a page a week over the last two years. That is how long it took to put together and publish this strategy and to come up with five options and no clear actions. While this report was being worked on, 336 people died on our roads. It is heartbreaking. There is another point I want to make. The first people on the scene of these tragedies are our front-line paramedics and ambulance drivers. They are the same people I was proud to stand with on the picket lines yesterday. They are not being valued by this Government. They are going to the scenes of these accidents and seeing the darkest days of people's lives. They are trying everything they can to save people or to show compassion. This Government is not showing compassion for anyone, however. Those workers deserve fair play and fair pay and conditions. I express my solidarity with them. I hope this Government will now step up and sort this out before there are any more strikes next week. From the bottom of my heart and on behalf of all of the people who are affected, I thank all of those people in the emergency services who go out to these accidents. They do unbelievable work. The Government needs to do more.

Sentiment score: -0.10