The Minister of State with responsibility for road safety has defended his record as the number of deaths on the Republic’s roads continues to rise.
“I don’t look at the record and say: ‘Is it a failure of me?’” Seán Canney said on Monday. “It’s a failure of everybody involved, including road users.”
His remarks come after a grim weekend on Ireland’s roads saw four fatalities, with the number of deaths overall on course to be higher than last year’s total.
Canney, an Independent TD for Galway East, on Monday hosted an informal meeting of EU transport ministers in Dublin Castle, at which road safety and the fuel crisis were to be discussed. The meeting is part of Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the European Union.
READ MORE
There were 190 deaths on Ireland’s roads last year, up from 171 in 2024. As of Monday, Garda statistics show a total of 138 deaths recorded on the roads so far this year, up from 127 in the same period last year.
Canney expressed his sympathy to the families of those killed in the latest collisions.
“Too much of it is happening. We have seen what has happened over the summer on our roads,” he said.
Canney said this was why he had progressed road safety legislation and would be signing regulations to ban e-scooter use by under-18s this week. The measure is due to come into effect on October 2nd.
He pointed to remarks by EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas, who spoke of 20,000 deaths per year on European roads and efforts to reduce that number.
“That would be classed as a pandemic if it was a disease that was causing that. So we need to arrest this increase and to bring it back,” Canney said.
Asked if he could stand over his record, given the rise in road deaths since he took on the role, Canney said everything that could be done from a legislative and educational point of view was being done.
“I take no joy in seeing the number of road deaths going up. We saw where somebody deliberately went down the wrong way on a motorway, killing five people,” he said of the fatal M9 crash last month. “That is something that we have got to address, nip it in the bud.”
He also said the Government had “dealt with” e-scooters and scramblers and “we’re continuing to monitor what is happening and also using technologies”.
“So I don’t look at the record and say, ‘Is it a failure of me?’ It’s a failure of everybody involved, including road users.
He said “99 per cent of the people on the roads drive with due care” but there are some who do not.
[ Opinion: Road deaths are not inevitable. Stop referring to them as ‘accidents’Opens in new window ]
Tzitzikostas later thanked the Irish presidency for putting road safety on the agenda of the meeting and said the EU had a target of halving road deaths and serious injuries by 2030 compared with 2019.
He said almost 20,000 people die on European roads every year, that “up to five times as many suffer life-changing injuries”, figures that were “unacceptable”.
Tzitzikostas said new technologies bring safety risks but also opportunities. “Connected and automated vehicles, for example, can help prevent accidents like the ones that are linked to fatigue, to distraction or to impairment. They can also improve traffic flows, reduce congestion and increase energy efficiency.”
He called for unity among EU member states on the approach to technology such as autonomous vehicles.
