Brennan insists road safety measures not underfunded

The Minister for Transport has rejected criticism by the chairman of the National Safety Council that not enough funding is being provided by his Department for road safety campaigns.

Mr Brennan said he did not believe that road safety was short of resources, and insisted new legislative changes would make a substantial difference to the numbers of road deaths. He also insisted he will fight for more resources.

The Minister was responding to the road safety chairman, Mr Eddie Shaw, who had commented that there was no central budget for road safety.

Mr Shaw was speaking after seven men aged between 18 and 30 were killed on the Republic's roads at the weekend, all of them in single-vehicle accidents.

Critics of the Government's road safety strategy have pointed out that six years after it was first promised, the gardaí still do not have a legal basis for random breath-testing of drivers, nor is the 60-plus-item penalty point programme rolled out beyond three offences.

The State-wide deployment of speed cameras, also promised six years ago, has not been delivered.

In addition the Garda computer is still not linked to that of the courts; gardaí have not been given the extra staff and resources to detect and process those suspected of offending.

The NSC commented that speed, alcohol and seat-belt wearing are still the largest factors in fatal accidents, while the 18 to 30 age group did not appear to be listening to the road safety message.

The Royal Melbourne Police, who influenced the Republic's previous road safety strategy, have commented that, for people to change their behaviour, they had to believe transgressors would be caught and punished.

However, international experts have recently questioned the probability of offenders being caught under the Republic's current arrangements.

Speaking in Sligo yesterday at the formal signing of the contract to construct the town's inner relief road, Mr Brennan said he was disappointed that seven more people had lost their lives on the roads, and expressed sympathy to the families of those who had died. He said he was especially concerned that so many road fatalities occur at weekends, particularly on Saturdays.

"I'll be asking the National Safety Council to have a special look at that, just to see how we can focus our attention more on the Saturday night aspect," he said. "The NSC have done a very good job, they have a budget of four to five million euro a year, and they have done a lot of good work so far."

Mr Brennan promised full random testing for drink-driving and the introduction of speed cameras would be achieved in the short term.

"I will continue to encourage the gardaí to give the maximum time they can to enforcement. But it's also going to require the co-operation of the insurance companies, the Government and the public to keep these road fatality numbers down," he said.