Dublin: Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has introduced a directive mandating all gardaí to dedicate half an hour of each shift to traffic road safety activities, aimed at curbing the number of road accidents and fatalities in Ireland.
Effective immediately, regional assistant commissioners will deploy all uniformed officers under their jurisdiction for 30 minutes during each duty tour to conduct road safety activities on busy roads with high visibility. Commissioner Harris emphasized that supervisors will oversee compliance with this directive, with exceptions made only in essential circumstances.
However, concerns have arisen over the inability of engineering teams at local authorities to access road accident data spanning the past six years due to GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) concerns.
Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin expressed dissatisfaction with this situation, announcing the formation of a specialist group tasked with resolving the issue promptly. Martin emphasised the importance of adopting an evidence-based approach to address road safety challenges.
Labour leader Ivana Bacik highlighted the severity of the problem, citing over 60 road-related fatalities this year alone. She demanded swift resolution of the data access issue to enable informed decision-making.
Justice Minister Helen McEntee identified speeding, drink driving, and drug driving as key challenges on the roads. Additionally, she raised concerns about the significant number of uninsured vehicles on the roads and stressed the importance of enforcing compliance with roadworthy standards, tax, insurance requirements, and other legal obligations.
McEntee disclosed that frontline gardaí conduct 25% of road checks and emphasised the need to increase the number of garda personnel to over 15,000 as a top priority. Over the recent Bank Holiday weekend, more than 5,000 checks were conducted.
Liz O’Donnell, Chair of the Road Safety Authority, emphasised the urgent need for the installation of speed cameras to detect and deter speeding, mobile phone use, and drink driving, all of which have shown increasing trends on the roads according to studies.
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