Road safety crisis demands urgent Government action – Lawlor
Road safety crisis demands urgent Government action – Lawlor - The Labour Party
Labour’s George Lawlor TD today called for urgent and decisive Government action to address the worsening road safety and transport crisis at Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil. Speaking after yet another day of traffic chaos across Dublin and surrounding counties, Deputy Lawlor said this Government is failing commuters, families and road users, as congestion worsens, public transport reliability declines, and road deaths continue to rise. He said the response from An Taoiseach in the Dáil today was unacceptable, barely scratching the surface of the scale of the crisis, and called on Government to immediately strengthen road policing, restore investment in public transport, and follow through on long-promised reforms of road safety governance.
Deputy Lawlor said:
“Families are paying the price for a transport system that is no longer functioning properly and for a road safety strategy that is clearly failing. Every day, workers are stuck in gridlock, buses simply do not show up, trains are cancelled, and entire Luas lines shut down at the first sign of disruption. For those trying to get to work, collect children, or care for loved ones, this is not an inconvenience. It is a daily stress that is deeply damaging to quality of life.
“This Government has allowed congestion to spiral while rowing back on remote working, abandoning the 2:1 investment commitment in public transport, and failing to deliver basic reliability across buses, trains and trams. At the same time, roads policing has been allowed to weaken. Dangerous driving is increasingly going unchallenged, with fewer penalty points issued for speeding than a decade ago and no meaningful rollout of tools like automatic number plate recognition or fixed speed cameras.
“The Taoiseach’s response in the Dáil today was deeply disappointing. It barely scratched the surface of what commuters and families are experiencing and failed to offer any credible plan to reverse rising road deaths. Already this year, 180 people have lost their lives on our roads. If current trends continue, this will surpass last year’s total, which was the highest in almost a decade. Ireland is now one of the few European countries where road deaths are increasing, despite an official target to halve fatalities by 2030.
“The Government’s own Road Safety Strategy is not being delivered. The Crowe Report on roads policing was clear about the need for stronger enforcement, yet action has stalled. Even more concerning is the decision to abandon the agreed reform of the Road Safety Authority, recommended by an independent external review and endorsed by Government last year, which would have separated safety oversight from operational functions such as the NCT and driver testing.
“Labour is calling for immediate action: a significant increase in roads policing and enforcement, full implementation of modern detection technologies, national oversight of known collision black spots, and the urgent reform of the Road Safety Authority so it has the powers and accountability to actually make our roads safer. Commuters, families and road users deserve a system that protects them. This Government must act now.”