Speed limit legality queried

Minister for Transport Martin Cullen has written to local authorities expressing concern over the "legal validity" of speed limits across the State.

Mr Cullen wrote to each city and county manager asking them to review their speed limit regime on February 17th last, after a District Court judge in Co Wicklow struck out 86 speeding cases. Mr Cullen is concerned that many councils including Dublin City Council, Fingal County Council and Cork City Council have not yet adopted by-laws covering special speed limit areas at all - two years after the changeover to metric.

Now the Minister is attempting to quantify the size of a potential loophole in the legislation which could call into question the validity of some of the lower speed limits in areas where no by-law regime has been set.

The letter, a copy of which has been seen by The Irish Times expressed the Minister's clear dissatisfaction that some local authorities have not yet adopted "special speed limit areas" which give them the power to set limits outside the four new "default limits" brought in on January 20th 2004.

On that date the four new default speed limits were set across the State by Ministerial order. These were 120km/h for motorways; 100km/h for rural national roads; 80km/h for rural non-national roads and 50km/h for roads in built-up areas.

All other limits outside that regime required adoption of a by-law regime by vote of the local council. There was one category exemption: where a council had previously adopted a by-law imposing a speed limit regime, this was automatically transposed into the new regime, by conversion to the nearest kilometre per hour rate.

Thus, a 40mph limit in a by-law became a 60km/h limit and was valid. But as the case at Bray District Court revealed, there was a potential loophole in that if a local authority had never adopted a speeding by-law regime, or delayed its adoption, only the four default limits would apply and special limits would not be legally enforceable.

Now, in a bid to quantify the scale of the problem, Mr Cullen has asked the city and county managers to respond to a questionnaire asking whether by-laws were in place prior to the changeover, are those by-laws still applicable and are there plans to make new bylaws? Mr Cullen added: "In summary, please assure me that any special speed limits on the roads of your county or city are underpinned by validly made by-laws."