RSA fears fatalities could rise

THE ROAD safety authority has said a reduction in its budget and the failure of the Government to introduce speed cameras means the recent positive trend of falling road deaths is under threat.

Chief executive Noel Brett said: “In the absence of the safety cameras and the reduction in RSA campaigning capacity there is a real danger of a decline in performance this year, and we face a major challenge as a nation in holding the current fatality rates.”

In documents released to The Irish Timesunder the Freedom of Information Act, Mr Brett says the authority's budget has been reduced by €2.74 million, with the RSA's advertising and public relations activities particularly affected.

This reduction has reduced the amount of advertising the authority can purchase for road-safety campaigns such as its anti-speeding television advert “Mess”, which is currently being aired.

However, while a reduction in advertising rates by broadcasters has partially compensated for this reduced spend, there is mounting frustration in the RSA at the stalled speed camera project.

Mr Brett told an Oireachtas Committee in September: “For every week that those cameras are not present, collisions will occur.”

The RSA’s chairman, Gay Byrne, has also expressed his disquiet at the delay, particularly as there is no clear reason why contract negotiations between the Department of Justice and the preferred bidder, Go Safe, have taken more than a year.

The Go Safe consortium, which includes Spectra, French firm Egis (the parent company of Transroute, which operates the Dublin Port Tunnel) and Australian multinational Redflex, was identified as the preferred bidder in June 2008, and €10 million was provided in the October Budget last year for the project. This is equivalent to half of one year’s operating costs.

Separately, three Irish families will today make presentations before the European Commission’s Committee on Petitions about collisions in which family members died.

The Farren family from Co Donegal and the Keane family from Co Kerry will request that the commission start an investigation into the maintenance of non-national roads here by local authorities.

Both families are frustrated at what they see as the lack of an adequate investigation system for collisions where the quality of the road may have been a factor – in the deaths of Sinead McDaid (22), of Cardonagh, Co Donegal, and Eileen Keane (18) and her boyfriend Trevor Chute (23) in Co Kerry.

Fine Gael MEP Jim Higgins, who is a member of the committee, has called on the Government to extend the remit of a European Directive on road infrastructure safety to rural and non-national roads.