THE GOVERNMENT IS set to disband the Road Safety Authority (RSA) in one of its last major decisions before the upcoming election.
The decision will be “binding” and although an incoming government would have the power to reverse it, this is “unlikely”, according to James Lawless, the Minister of State with responsibility for road safety.
A memo to cabinet “in the next week or 10 days” will propose hiving off the RSA’s operational functions such as running driving tests and coordinating the NCT to a new agency, Lawless said.
He noted there have been long waiting times for some services which are essential to drive legally in Ireland. Some functions of the motor tax office may go to this new agency also.
Lawless’s assessment is that this operational side of the RSA is “not working”, while the authority’s safety promotion remit is also “not where it needs to be”.
These problems are compounding each other, with “potential for distraction between the two arms”, he added.
“If there’s a board meeting dominated by discussion on NCT delays and licence failures, there’s not the same time being afforded to discussion on road safety, for example,” he suggested.
“The road safety piece appears to be sharing a stage…in terms of board bandwidth and management bandwidth and activities, and they’re competing for attention, and neither [function] is really getting the attention it deserves.”
Lawless added that the public deserved to be able to avail of state services such as licence renewal and driving tests in a timely fashion and while the RSA has encountered issues with contracts and providers of some services “ultimately the buck has to stop somewhere”.
The RSA’s safety advocacy remit will be taken over by a new body directly funded by the exchequer.
At present the RSA partly funds this work with revenue from its operational functions, but it’s understood a report for government on the agency by consultants Indecon has found that this funding model is not sustainable and risks leaving advocacy underfunded.
Last year, the RSA’s total expenditure was just under €100m, roughly equivalent to its income.
It has not yet been decided within government how separate the new advocacy body will be from the Department of Transport.
Lawless said: “It may not be decided in the next couple of weeks, but I suppose there’s a direction and intention of government to separate out the operation from the research and safety piece.”
The new road safety agency could be an executive agency within the department in the same way that the Probation Service, for example, is within the Department of Justice. Lawless said he would like to see an increased emphasis on research.
In a statement last night, the RSA said it noted the Minister for Transport’s intention to bring a proposal to government in relation to its future structure, and the government’s commitment in the budget to “fund road safety services and campaigns, against the gaps in the existing funding model, as stated within Indecon’s independent review”.
“The RSA will continue to collaborate and work closely with the Department of Transport and other key stakeholders to make Irish roads safer for everyone, recognising the need for continued investment to save lives and reduce serious injuries,” it said.
The demise of the RSA comes during a road safety crisis which started under the current government – and has deteriorated over the course of its term.
After years of decreasing numbers of road deaths, and upward trend in fatal accidents emerged during the pandemic and has continued in the years since, although the number of deaths so far this year is now tracking slightly behind the same period of last year. This may be due to increased garda enforcement.
In the first seven months of the year, 113 lives were lost on Irish roads, 44% more than in the equivalent period of 2019, before this government took office, according to the most recent RSA analysis.
Is this collapse in road safety this government’s legacy?
“I would say that the government has taken swift action to address it,” Lawless countered.
“It [the government's response] is as fundamental as you can get, an organisation being restructured and separated – and very radical transformation [of the RSA].”
Lawless added that he would like to do more, including a more graduated system of penalty points for speeding.
“At the moment, it’s three points whether you’re in 1km over the limit or 100km. I think we could possibly have maybe two penalty points for, you know, 0-10km over the limit, maybe six points if you’re over 50km over the limit, something like that,” he explained.
Speeders will need to watch out – up to 12 new fixed and average speed cameras will be put in place by the end of this year, as part of a much wider programme of new speed cameras. Average speed cameras monitor the time it takes for a car to get from one point to another on a stretch of road and calculate whether they have been speeding.
Lawless said he’d also like to go further by making mobile phone use at the wheel a “non-intercept offence”, meaning it could be detected using cameras as is done in other jurisdictions such as the Netherlands, and tickets sent in the post in the same way as is done for speeding. At present, gardaí have to catch people using their mobile phones.
“It’s legislative change, but it’s simple enough and one I’d like to see. We’re rolling out hundreds of speed cameras around the country, so I would like those cameras to be more than speed cameras, I’d like them to be road safety cameras,” he said.
Asked whether roadside emergency medicine in Ireland could be improved to save more lives when accidents happen, Lawless said he has spoken to the Department of Health about the idea of more doctors attending the scene of accidents – as is par for the course in other European countries – and Health is “actively looking at it”.
With an election probably just over a month away, what is the difference between Fianna Fáil and its coalition partners on transport policy?
Lawless mentions Fianna Fáil’s backing for a dedicated transport police force in Ireland. He argued that this would guarantee resourcing of transport policing – as officers could not be moved to other areas when there is pressure to do so.
He also instanced Fianna Fáil’s preference for multi-annual funding for road projects, arguing that some road schemes such as the N72 in Cork and upgrade works on the N4 near Newtownforbes would have progressed faster if longer term funding had been put in place.
This is understood to be a point of difference with the Green Party. Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan has been challenged on this issue in the Dáil by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs. The Green Party minister has indicated the current system of drawing down funding each year allocations means robust procedures are in place to ensure that expenditure can be attributed to individual projects.
Lawless praised the current leadership team at the RSA. It is not yet clear whether the current executive will be able to remain when the organisation is transformed into two separate agencies.
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