Government funding of road safety campaign criticised

The lives of 50 people could have been saved if the Government had properly resourced its road-safety campaign, the chairman of the National Safety Council claimed yesterday.

Announcing that 408 people had died on the State's roads so far this year - 11 more than the corresponding period last year - the chairman, Mr Eddie Shaw, criticised the Government for not implementing aspects of the five-year strategy The Road to Safety 1998-2002.

The strategy aims to reduce road deaths by 20 per cent on 1997 levels by 2002, using a combination of methods including State-wide deployment of speed cameras, a penalty points system for drivers and a written test. Although the strategy appeared initially successful, with a reduction in the number of road deaths from 458 in 1998 to 413 in 1999, the figures for this year have shown a halt in the downward trend.

Mr Shaw was unequivocal in his criticism of the Government for "launching a strategy with no budget". He pointed out that the penalty points system for drivers was supposed to have been developed during 1998 and legislation to enact it brought in by 1999, but that was not now expected until the end of 2001 or early 2002.

The written test for drivers was supposed to be introduced by 1999 and targets for the numbers of people wearing seat belts and obeying speed limits have been revised downwards.

"Road deaths are twice what they should be by international comparison, and if the strategy was on target 50 people who have died so far this year would be alive. Ultimately we could drop the kill rate by 50 per cent."

Mr Shaw revealed the National Safety Council was increasingly turning towards private sponsorship of its initiatives and announced a contribution of £250,000 from the Irish Insurance Federation for road-safety campaigns. State funding was "in bits and pieces all over the place". The strategy is at least two years behind schedule, he added.

The Irish Times has established that Mr Cartan Finegan, a former chairman of the National Safety Council, warned the Government as early as March 1999 that the strategy was in danger of failure.

According to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, Mr Finegan had an increasingly fraught relationship with the Department of the Environment in 1999 and repeatedly asked for support.

Mr Finegan commissioned a report by the economist Dr Peter Bacon to show substantial savings to the State by implementing the road-safety strategy. The department failed to accept his recommendations and he was not reappointed to the council last January.

Mr Bobby Molloy, the Minister of State for the Environment, said yesterday that considerable progress had been made on the strategy and pointed out that it still had two full years to run. Mr Molloy said a reduction in road deaths of the order of 20 per cent by 2002 was still achievable and blamed the delay on introducing the penalty points system on the provision of information technology for the project.