I express my sympathies and that of the Labour Party to the pedestrian who died and the three other people who have been injured in Dublin city centre this afternoon in a terrible crash. Where do we start on road safety? A total of 190 lives were lost on our roads last year, the highest since 2014. We need to get a grip on this. I am not sure that the Minister of State has the political will or the courage to do so. We do not need new laws that we have heard trumpeted in the past few days. We have loads of existing laws on speeding, penalty points and driver behaviour. We just need enforcement - relentless enforcement. We have not seen any urgency from this Government in providing the resources to facilitate this enforcement, whether it is additional gardaí or traffic cameras. We were told there would be 150 new recruits into the Garda traffic corps over the past two years. We got about half that. Pre-recession, the Garda traffic force was around 1,300 strong. Now it is somewhere between 600 and 750. It has been decimated. The number of traffic gardaí has been cut in half, and, at the same time, about a million new cars have been added to our roads. Is it any wonder that it is like the wild west on our roads now? I do not think this Government gets road safety. First, the Government has completely undermined the commitment in the Road Traffic Act to introduce a default urban speed limit of 30 km/h across the country. Lower speed limits work. Let us look at Wales. Road casualties dropped by 25% in the 18 months after they introduced a similar measure. The Minister's approach now is to make this an individual county councils to decide themselves. It undermines the national nature of this measure. We know that many county councils are going to struggle to pass these laws. They have to do it. They have to pass individual by-laws for every road that they want to make a 30 km/h zone, rather than a blanket urban area of 30 km/h. It is just not the way to do it. The Government's change in policy regarding the RSA is also hugely concerning. There is an inherent conflict at the heart of the RSA; it is both poacher and gamekeeper when it comes to vehicles on our roads. On the one hand, the RSA is funded by driving tests and the NCT, and on the other, it is tasked with making our roads safer via restrictions on car use. While it is doing well in reducing driving test wait times, it is failing miserably when it comes to road safety. All it does is act as some kind of PR firm, doing photo-ops with Ministers and trying to wrap our children and vulnerable road users generally in high-vis clothing, as though that will keep them safe. The Government must split up the RSA as recommended by an external independent review and endorsed previously by the Government. The Minister of State has basically said that the RSA has got driving test wait times down, so let us leave it alone. We also heard that cost was an issue in this decision. That the Department would penny-pinch on this is pretty appalling. What does it say about our attitude to road safety? What does it say about the value we are placing on those people's lives? Another issue I want to touch on is this proposal or gimmick coming out of Cabinet over the past few days around mandatory high-vis gear and helmets for cyclists. The fact that this is even being proposed betrays a lack of seriousness and a lack of understanding of exactly what is making our roads unsafe. Road safety is not a personal protective equipment issue. Treating it as such shifts responsibility onto the potential victims, rather than addressing the actual causes of road danger such as road user behaviour, speed, vehicle design, safe infrastructure and so on. There is no credible evidence to suggest that helmets or high-vis mandates reduce collisions, serious injuries or deaths on our roads. Standard bike helmets are not designed to cushion the blow from a two-tonne SUV smashing into you at 50 km/h or 60 km/h, or a HGV rolling over you at a dangerous junction. The helmets are designed for low-speed falls, not collisions involving cars or HGVs, whose size and speed far exceed the conditions that helmets are tested for. Most cyclists wear helmets anyway. If the Government wants to encourage more of that, just make helmets free, rather than making it an offence not to wear one. International evidence shows that helmet mandates result in a reduction in cycling, which, in turn, leads to higher emissions, worse public health outcomes and essentially criminalises cycling. I met with the Climate and Health Alliance this morning, who, like me, are appalled by this proposal. The NTA wants to increase the number of cyclists by 14% by 20, which is not a hugely ambitious target. How will criminalising certain forms of cycling lead to an increase in cycling? It will undermine the Dublinbikes scheme and other city bike schemes around the country that we are currently trying to expand. The beauty of cycling is the freedom it gives, the ability to pick up a bike on a whim, enjoy the wind in your hair and to just go where you want to go, but cycling is terrifying, particularly in Dublin. I cycle all the time and I also drive. I wear a helmet and high-vis on my bike but I do not feel safe. I have to presume that everything else on the road is trying to kill me every minute I am on it. I get a chill of fear any time on my bike when I stick my hand out to change lane with my son on the back seat of the bike. Is the driver behind me watching? Will they let me into the lane? Are they paying attention or are they on their phone? Are they staring at the iPad-type screen displays that are in cars now? Are they slowing down sufficiently? Can I make contact with the driver to ensure they know I am there? All these checks, fears and chills you get, you never get when you are driving a car - never. We know what we need to do to make our roads safer: lower speeds; well-designed junctions; segregated walking and cycling infrastructure; proper road maintenance, as mentioned; and relentless enforcement of the rules of the road via gardaí and cameras. This is not just on bank holiday weekends and for Christmas but all the time. Attempts at mandating helmets and high-vis gear are a distraction and a gimmick to make it look like the Government is doing something. It is an exercise in victim-blaming that does nothing to address the actual dangers to cyclists and other vulnerable road users. Any proposal to extend mandates from e-scooters and high-powered e-bikes to ordinary bikes would represent a major policy regression contradicting both international best practice and the Government's own ambitions with regard to active travel and public health. I will briefly touch on the scrambler issue. I extend my deepest condolences to the family of Grace Lynch. Every parent will have been touched by the incredible bravery shown by Grace's mother Siobhán in the wake of such an unimaginable tragedy. The Government will have the Labour Party's support in any efforts to take scramblers off our roads and public spaces.

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