A change in legislation to allow for the impounding of all unsafe vehicles, whether they are registered in Ireland or not, is one of the measures being considered to tackle the mounting carnage on the nation's roads, according to Minister for Transport Martin Cullen.
Speaking in Co Mayo yesterday after he had turned the sod for the €63 million Charlestown bypass, Mr Cullen said the current law allowed only vehicles that were registered in the State to be impounded.
Many cars in Ireland at the moment were not registered here, he indicated. Mr Cullen said the nation was in the grip of "a horrific phase of accidents". It was appalling for the families and everybody else involved but once again, it came down to driver behaviour on the roads.
Driver attitudes had to change but there had to be a collective will to bring about such a change.
Asked about the issue of some non-nationals driving unsafe vehicles, Mr Cullen said he did not want to highlight one group compared to another but clearly, over the past number of months, there had been a new phenomenon in which a number of non-nationals were involved in serious accidents. This was a cause for concern, he continued.
Mr Cullen said he had been talking to the new chief executive of the Road Safety Authority about some kind of initiative that would be helpful in alerting non-nationals to the dangers of driving on Irish roads.
"We are simply going to have to get the message across, along with stronger law and more enforcement, that the behaviour on our roads in Ireland today is literally unacceptable," the Minister continued.
Mr Cullen said he wanted to establish the facts about the ability of non-nationals here to understand road signs and the rules of the road. Perhaps an information campaign involving leaflets printed in the languages of the main countries supplying migrants here was needed.
"But I think, in fairness, no matter where you drive in the world, everybody knows you are supposed to observe the speed limit and you are not supposed to drink and drive. I mean, these are not peculiar to Ireland.
"These are universal issues and I think it isn't a case of people coming into one country and misbehaving".
Tánaiste Mary Harney yesterday highlighted the need for a major emphasis on the education of young people in road safety to tackle the rising rate of road fatalities.
She described as an absolute tragedy the crashes in Donegal and Carlow which claimed the lives of six people over the weekend.
"We have lost 63 lives already on our roads this year, that's more than 10 lives a week and this is a huge tragedy for those people and their families," she stated.
She said that Donegal TD Pat "the Cope" Gallagher had just been appointed as Minister of State for Transport and he would be addressing the issue of road safety.
One of Mr Gallagher's first tasks will be to meet local gardaí and road safety authorities in the Inishowen area in Co Donegal in an effort to reduce multiple road fatalities in the county.