We are approaching another bank holiday and by this time next week the funerals of those who will almost inevitably die on the roads this weekend will probably be over. The situation, bluntly put, is as bleak and awful as that. Can nothing be done? Not, it would seem, without a redoubling of political will and a more robust discharging of duties and obligations by parents, publicans, gardaí and individual motorists - in other words, by just about everyone involved.
The case for action has been outlined several times in recent days. According to National Safety Council chairman Eddie Shaw, Government commitments on road safety fail to materialise and what little is done is neither co-ordinated nor evaluated for effectiveness. "No one joins up the thinking, no one is responsible, no one is accountable, there is no will, no management, there is no such process," he told TDs.
It is a litany of dreadful incompetence. The penalty points system is a good example: launched with a fanfare in November 2002, it has remained mired by an absence of necessary technological and administrative support and differences between the departments of justice and finance.
In Mr Shaw's estimation, about half of the road deaths and injuries in 2004 were "entirely preventable" and resulted from policy failure by the Government. On his figures, 144 people who died in 2004 would be alive today and 1,200 people would not have been injured, some of them doomed to spend the rest of their lives with severe mental and physical disabilities. International norms suggest that there should be about 20 road deaths per month in Ireland. There are closer to 33 per month - that is over 50 per cent more than there should be.
Transport Minister Martin Cullen says that a new body, the Road Safety Authority, will come into force next year. A package of measures will include statewide deployment of speed cameras and random breath-testing of drivers. But both these measures were due to be introduced in 1999 - six years and more than 2,300 road deaths ago.
Then there is the matter of individual responsibility. This is usually taken to mean driver behaviour, and rightly so. But there are other levels of individual responsibility as well. This week, in the Circuit Court sitting in Roscommon town, Judge Anthony Kennedy fined a Vincent McCormack €1,000 for dangerous driving, €1,000 for drunk driving, and banned him for 10 years. McCormack, who pleaded guilty, killed two people at 12.20am on December 18th, 2004: Teresa Smith, a mother of three from Galway, and Martin Connor, a father of two from Roscommon. His erratic driving forced their car off the road. McCormack, coming from a pub, was, by his own admission "wrecked". Judge Kennedy said that he had been "plainly out of his mind with drink".
On the face of it, fines of €2,000 and a 10 year ban do not amount to an appropriate response to the needless loss of two lives.