Incoming Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey's biggest challenge will be to deliver on road safety promises he and the Taoiseach made nine years ago, writes Tim O'Brien
Few Ministers get to deal with actual life and death issues. But with Ireland ranking among the lowest in Europe for reductions in road fatalities, and with a new road safety strategy to be launched in July, Noel Dempsey has a real chance to make an impact.
It is, after all, an area he knows well. As Minister for the Environment, in 1998 Mr Dempsey and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern used the Royal Hospital Kilmainham to showcase road safety experts from around the globe, during the launch of a major five-year strategy on reducing road deaths.
While the reduction in deaths ultimately fell to close to the levels predicted, much of that strategy was not implemented in the five years to 2002. Key target dates were missed and subsequently changed, and many key commentators asked how many of those killed might have been saved if the strategy had been implemented as promised.
In 1991 the then chairman of the National Safety Council, Cartan Finegan, hired the economist Dr Peter Bacon to illustrate that there was a cost benefit advantage to be had from investing in road safety. As the investment failed to appear, Finegan's comments on Government inaction became increasingly pointed. He was not reappointed when his term of office ended.
In 2000 the new chairman of the National Safety Council, Eddie Shaw, said that without doubt, if the strategy had been implemented as it was envisaged "people would be walking about who are now dead". He said part of the problem seemed to be "a black hole between the Departments of Finance, Justice and the gardaí." He instanced the Garda request for four people to operate the integrated technology required. "After 14 months the answer came back that they could have two," Shaw said.
Shaw resigned a few years later during Martin Cullen's tenure, after publicly saying he could not in conscience continue to preside over a safety strategy in the face of a continuing lack of urgency on the part of Government.
For a Government to lose one chairman of the safety council was unfortunate, to lose two in succession was surely carelessness. There is certainly evidence of dragging of heels on the issue.
When Mr Dempsey and the Taoiseach held their policy launch in the Royal Hospital in 1998 the penalty points system was to be developed that year, and the legislation brought forward in 1999.
After this date was missed, the second progress report of the high-level group set up to oversee the implementation of the strategy carried a new target date without explanation. This report, dated July 2000, set a target for the end of that year.
When it was missed again, a third progress report of the high-level group, released in July 2001, moved this date to the end of 2001. Penalty points were introduced for a handful of offences on October 31st, 2002.
In addition, the strategy has constantly been beset by Government failure to tackle problems with computerised systems, legislation regarding random breath-testing and enforcement in a timely fashion.
Other items from the 1998 strategy which were delayed for a number of years before introduction included: regulations to require the carrying of a driving licence, the written theory test and computerisation of a national driver file.
Speed cameras were to have been extended progressively across the State from 2000. This week, an incredible seven years later, we are told that a tender for about 60 cameras is imminent.
As well as the National Safety Council complaining of Government inactivity - the Insurance Industry Federation, as a member of the Government's High Level Group, complained as far back as 2000 that while there have been many target successes, it has failed in the overall objective to challenge the "culture of carnage".
Federation chairman Mike Kemp said "until a serious political review of the current policy is undertaken, road deaths and accidents will continue at their current high rate."
The media, including this newspaper, have also complained. A review of the headlines over the period includes: Drink driving rises a major problem; Radical action needed to reduce road death; and Key targets in road safety strategy missed, all of which are from 2001 - before Mr Dempsey left office.
The commentator Vincent Browne wrote that in one year there had been "the equivalent of 12 Omagh-scale massacres in this country. Unlike the response to the one of August 15th, there has been no sense of national crisis, no reconvening of the Dáil for the passage of emergency legislation".
He pointed out that "almost one-quarter of people who drive cars on the roads have not yet passed, or have failed to pass, a test to determine whether they are capable of driving a car in a manner that is not dangerous to other citizens."
We are still awaiting the elimination of the driver test backlog and the situation which allows drivers on the road untested, or after having failed a test.
The Government reaction to what could be described as an avalanche of criticism, has been to point out that given the increasing numbers of cars on the roads and the fact that road fatalities are falling, there is ample evidence to suggest that the Government is doing a good job.
Indeed, as far back as 2001, Mr Dempsey himself said "real and worthwhile" gains had been made. He said the interim targets contained in the Strategy for Road Safety 1998-2002 had been fully met, even though many aspects of the strategy remained unimplemented.
Road fatalities per million inhabitants had been reduced to 112, four below the interim target figure, and 268 crash reduction schemes had been completed, 28 more than scheduled, he said at the time.
He was not available this week to respond to inquiries of what might have been, if road safety strategies were fully implemented.
A spokeswoman said he was "gung ho" on the issue but wanted "to read himself into the brief, as he believes things have changed considerably" since he was last in charge of the strategy.
However, alongside the Insurance Industry Federation, the last two chairmen of the former national safety council, and the media, criticism has come recently from our European neighbours.
According to a report Raising Compliance with Road Safety Law, published by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), an independent body dedicated to reducing road deaths in Europe, the number of people killed on Irish roads fell by just 3.2 per cent between 2001 and 2005.
This ranks Ireland 20th out of 25 EU states for cutting deaths, despite the introduction of the penalty points system in 2002. ETSC executive director Jörg Beckmann said Ireland's achievement was "modest".
"At this rate, Ireland will not be able to meet the EU objective of halving road deaths by 2010. It is time for Ireland to start learning from the best performing countries," said Mr Beckmann. "It must raise compliance in the area of road safety."
So we are left to wonder, as the new minister for Transport Noel Dempsey prepares for a July launch of the Road Safety Strategy 2007-2011, will he be back again in nine years time to launch it again?