News Analysis:A year on and the Government is still falling short on promised speed cameras and lower drink-drive limits, writes David Labanyi
THE FURORE around the withdrawal of medical cards for over-70s overshadowed a number of retrograde road-safety decisions in last week's Budget.
Crucially, only six months' funding, or €10 million, for the privatised speed-camera project has been provided.
This in effect means they cannot appear on Irish roads before next July, which a cynic might suggest neatly ensures they cannot be in place to further aggravate an already cranky electorate in the run-up to the local and European elections next June.
While a number of reasons for the delayed delivery of the cameras has emerged - from a legal objection to a row within Cabinet over their funding - the Government has taken the view that these cannot be resolved until the middle of next year at the earliest.
The funding argument doesn't stand up, because it is clear the Government stands to make significant amounts of money from the privatised speed cameras. Earlier this year the secretary general of the Department of Justice, Seán Aylward, told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport the proposed network of 6,000 camera hours could generate half a million penalties a year.
This is over and above the roughly 200,000 speeding motorists currently detected using the old Gatso vans and the hand-held units and also the additional fines generated by a new automatic number-plate reading system due to be introduced shortly by the Garda.
At €80 per speeding fine the privatised speed cameras alone could generate roughly €40 million a year from fines or four times the amount of Government funding allocated to the project for 2009.
However, the amount of political will behind the speed camera project and a second controversial proposal - reducing the drink-drive limit - will act as a bellwether of Government determination to improve road safety.
When the Road Safety Strategy was published last October it set a June 2008 deadline for the cameras to be in place. At that point the five preferred bidders had been identified and the Garda was assessing the bids.
But the deadline was missed, with statements from the Department of Justice suggesting the cost - an estimated €20 million per annum - was far higher than original estimates.
The cameras are a key component in achieving the Road Safety Strategy target of cutting road deaths to about 250 a year. In 2007, a total of 338 people were killed on the roads and, at the time of writing, 231 had been killed in 2008, a fall of 34 on the same period last year.
Missing key deadlines in the strategy raises questions about the level of political attention on road safety coming from the Government.
Aside from the speed cameras, other deadlines have been missed, not least the requirement for the Department of Transport to legislate for a graduated driver licencing system by the end of September.
Mr Dempsey must also reduce the drink-drive limit. This will be another politically unpopular move, particularly in rural areas and at a time when the Government is under pressure.
Unfortunately for Mr Dempsey, the deadline set for this is the end of June 2009, again just in time for the local and European elections.
The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has recommended cutting the limit from the current 80mg to 50mg.
In last week's Budget the RSA managed to hold on to the majority of its funding.
However, the allocation for buying driving tests from the private sector has been reduced by 40 per cent to €6 million after the average waiting time for a test fell to 10 weeks in June.
This year the RSA had to surrender 1.5 per cent of its budget in a move that is understood to have resulted in the postponement of a drug-driving education programme and, in the current climate, cuts to next year's allocation cannot be ruled out.
The RSA also failed in its request to have the VAT on motorcycle safety equipment reduced from the higher rate. In fact, following the 0.5 per cent increase in the top rate of VAT, this equipment is now more expensive.
The RSA sought this reduction because in the UK there is no VAT on these items and as a result many Irish-based motorcyclists are purchasing this equipment online from UK suppliers, resulting in problems with equipment fitting properly.
Mr Dempsey will require equal amounts of political will and judgment to deal with these issues quickly, regardless of wider political considerations.