The Road Safety Strategy produced some mixed results for Minister for Transport Martin Cullen, writes David Labanyi.
Martin Cullen has spent much of his two years as Minister for Transport implementing the Road Safety Strategy 2004-2006, which ended last week. As such, many of its successes are largely his, ditto its failings.
Judged strictly on results the strategy failed, as its central target, to cut road deaths to under 300 this year, was not met. So far this year 350 people have died on the roads. Other targets in the strategy: to screen over 460,000 vehicles a year for drink-driving and carry out 11 million speed checks, were also not met.
This is because the introduction of two key initiatives in the strategy, random breath-testing and privatised speed cameras were delayed - or as the Minister puts it "were at the back-end of the programme". Privatised speed cameras will not be in place until next year.
He says it is a matter of "huge regret" that the road deaths target wasn't met.
"On the other hand, the Traffic Corps is now clearly visible and well established - there are now 35 - and we have added the mobile phones, and the gardaí are outsourcing for speed cameras," he says.
However, the key element has been random breath-testing, which has had an immediate impact since its introduction in July. Twenty fewer people have been killed to date this year compared with 2005.
"The fatality figures in 2005 and the first six months of 2006 were particularly bad. But the turnaround since then has been significant," he said. Mr Cullen also says that comparing road fatalities in 2006 with data from five or 10 years ago ignores the significant increases in drivers and vehicles. "Simply put, there are far fewer drivers being killed or injured as a proportion of our driver population."
Unlike the first penalty points, Mr Cullen does not expect the effect of random breath-testing to wear off as the novelty fades.
"I would be surprised if we see a repeat of what happened with penalty points: where the trends will be reversed and fatalities start to rise again." This is because he says gardaí now have greater resources, although he accepts that much of the random alcohol-testing enforcement is based on Garda overtime.
"If there was a missing ingredient to date it was that the gardaí didn't have the capacity to maintain the enforcement. That led drivers to start thinking: 'I can get away with this'. What you are seeing is not a blitz at the start. This will be maintained. The financial resources available to the Traffic Corps will continue. Their overtime budget will not run out."
Given the impact of the new testing regime, why did it take so long to be introduced? Was it because of pressure from the powerful publicans' lobby, as suggested recently by the chairman of the Road Safety Authority?
"I don't know what Gay Byrne was referring to. The fact is you would not have got this in three or four years ago. There would have been an outcry. However, when I brought this in, I didn't have any significant concerns expressed to me."
Mr Cullen says he noted comments by former Fine Gael councillor Michael Fitzgerald, who claimed the new drink driving regime was strangling rural Ireland, but said he does not expect the public to turn against random breath-testing.
However, with almost 2,000 people a month charged with drink-driving under the new law, Mr Cullen believes a legal challenge is inevitable. "I have no indication of any challenge but I suspect inevitably there will be a legal challenge. Based on information from the AG's office we believe that the legislation is very robust."
Mr Cullen says this Government's attitude to road safety has changed and the issue has moved up the priority list. He points to the formation of the ministerial group on road safety to support this view.
"The ministerial group on road safety meets every six to eight weeks. Ministers from the Departments of Justice, Education, Environment, Health and Transport all sit on this group, along with the Taoiseach and the Garda Commissioner." The head of the RSA and the Garda Traffic Corps, Assistant Commissioner Eddie Rock, also attend meetings.
Mr Cullen says this group was central in the establishment and staffing of the Garda Traffic Corps. "Other initiatives will come forward from this Ministerial Committee in the new year in the health and education."
He also believes, or perhaps hopes, that the public's view of road safety also changed over the last five years. "There was a tendency in the early days to personalise road safety, to look for someone to blame, for a scapegoat."
Does this mean that no one should be held accountable when targets, such as those in road safety strategy, are missed?
"I think as the media has started to look at this in more detail you are starting to get a more balanced debate - although some still want to find a scapegoat," he replies.
Alongside the introduction of random breath-testing, Mr Cullen sees the establishment of the RSA as the other key road safety achievement this year.
Among its other tasks the RSA is currently drawing up the next five-year road safety strategy and will shortly publish series of measures to reduce fatalities among young drivers.
However, Opposition politicians have accused Mr Cullen of hiding behind the RSA in the Dáil, with many written road safety questions now receiving the stock reply: "That is now a matter for the RSA."
"I do want deputies' questions dealt with, and I have asked the RSA to do so. Sometimes the question is outside my remit, particularly with some of the statistical information."
While part of his brief is slowing the rate of road deaths, another is infrastructure and, by extension, congestion. Last week's chaos on the M50 shows just how precariously balanced traffic in the capital is, particularly while work on the orbital route is continuing.
Mr Cullen believes the Dublin Port Tunnel will bring an immediate benefit to the city centre when it opens next week but concedes that it will be another 18 months before the tens of thousands of motorists using the M50 daily see any significant improvements.
By the middle of 2008 the traffic lights will have been removed from the M50 interchanges, Mr Cullen says. "The existing toll barriers will also be gone in 18 months. They will be literally bulldozed off the M50 and replaced with a new system. One option is there will be a photograph of a number plate and you will get a bill like an ESB bill, but the plaza will be gone."
He confirms there will only be one tolling point, at or near the existing WestLink.
Over the longer term larger public transport projects such as the new Luas lines and Metro will bring benefits.
However, with 2.2 million private cars, and rising, now on Irish roads, congestion on key routes at peak times will continue to grow.
According to Mr Cullen, congestion is now a fact of life for all capital cities, and Dublin is no exception.
"What we have to do is get to the point where we have the public transport in place - and then see how we manage the love affair that the entire planet has with the car. In countries with the best public transport systems people still have a huge propensity to use the car."
"I think there is a bit of a utopian view in Ireland - that if we provide all of the public transport - we will all toddle out at 8am and drive freely - it is not going to happen."
Another impediment to driving freely are the inconsistent and inappropriate speed limits that adorn regional roads across the State, much to the anger of Mr Cullen. He wrote to all local authorities again over the summer asking them to rectify the problem but a significant number failed to do so.
"It is a very difficult and a very frustrating issue. In some councils the necessary changes still have not been made and that has been very frustrating."
However, because logistically no one agency can check every single road, councils will have to be persuaded or cajoled into compliance, Mr Cullen said.
"The best way to deal with this issue is with the councils. I don't see responsibility for this being taken from the county councils. I will work with them and the Minister for the Environment to deal with this."
Yet, despite the recalcitrant councils, the phone-in fodder of massive traffic tailbacks and watching road traffic legislation regularly spliced in the courts, Mr Cullen is not dissuaded.
Asked if he would relish a return to the portfolio next summer, should the electorate and Taoiseach so decide, Mr Cullen says he would.