I do not think we have a legislation problem in road safety. I believe we primarily have an implementation and enforcement problem. Our Vision Zero strategy is heading in the wrong direction. Road deaths in Ireland rose by 22% from 2019 to 2025, while the EU average fell by 12%. That is not progress. Behaviour on our roads is worsening, while the system meant to protect people has failed to keep pace with the reality - more people, more cars, new vehicle types and more pressure on infrastructure. There has been a loss of confidence in our road safety strategy and the Government must act now to restore it. We have to remember the families affected and listen to road safety groups like PARC and people like Susan Gray who are dedicated to road safety. Fourteen people have lost their lives already this year, including somebody today. I am thinking of that family. What are the concrete plans to prioritise road safety, reform the RSA and properly tackle enforcement? Awareness and education matter but they are not enough. From the past six months, I will give the Minister of State three examples of where I have seen a worrying lack of co-ordination between agencies and Departments. Take illegal licence plates. Despite assurances from the Department of Transport, the Garda already had enforcement powers. It took two years and repeated parliamentary questions before fixed charge notices were implemented for illegal licence plates. Then there is Garda access to the national vehicle and driver file, NVDF, which records licence status, disqualifications and penalty points. It is the backbone of enforcement on the roadside. For months, I was told by the Department of Transport that gardaí had full roadside access via their mobility app, and had so for at least three years. The Garda then said access was partial, that a memorandum of understanding had only been signed and that a pilot was under way. Since December, all Garda members now have full NVDF access and I welcome that, but what was happening over the past three years? Even now, I do not have full confidence that gardaí and insurance companies have all the information they need from the NVDF. The courts system is not capturing driver numbers of people who are disqualified or assigned penalty points, so a process then has to be undertaken to match drivers to offences on the NVDF. I have a simple question that has not been answered yet. Fifteen hundred court-issued penalty points have not been matched to drivers but a report from the Department of Transport says they could have been. Has there been any follow-up to see if any of them were for drivers who could have breached the 12- or seven-penalty-point threshold for disqualification? These are fixable issues: co-ordination, implementation and enforcement.

Sentiment score: -0.13