Safety strategy hampered by lack of proper budget

The Government has been criticised for failing to provide a way of measuring the performance of the Road Safety Strategy because it failed to set a budget for the plan.

In a review of the first Road Safety Strategy 1998 to 2002 Goodbody Economic Consultants said because "no overall budget was established . . . no monitoring of expenditure [on the strategy] took place".

The absence of a set budget means it was particularly difficult to assess the performance of enforcement measures taken under the plan, the consultants said.

The report recommended that any new strategy "be accompanied by a programme complement that identifies budgets, targets, performance indicators and performance monitoring and evaluation procedures and initiatives".

However, because the cross-departmental report - commissioned jointly on behalf of all departments involved in the road safety strategy - was not available until March of this year, its findings were too late to be included in the development of the current Road Safety Strategy 2004 to 2006.

The report also recommended that "targets for levels of enforcement should be set and progress towards those targets should be monitored over the course of the strategy".

A spokesman for the Department of transport accepted that the failure to set budgets was "something that we can now learn from in terms of future strategies".

He said despite being too late for inclusion the second Strategy the €30,000 report was useful because it was the first report of its type: "There is some very valuable material coming through in this and it prove useful in terms of future work we will do in the whole road safety area."

The consultants say the first Road Safety Strategy had seen improvements in seatbelt use and, to a lesser extent, drink driving but that progress on changing motorists' attitudes to speeding were slower.

Despite the Government not setting a budget the consultants have estimated the overall spend on road safety measures during the first strategy at €169 million with the majority of going on enforcement by gardaí.

The consultants also note that road fatalities were reduced by 20.3 per cent during the strategy - meeting the target - and that seatbelt-wearing rate for drivers and front seat passengers combined, increased from 57 per cent to 72 per cent between 1998 and 2002.

It also noted that a reduction in the number of crashes levels during the course of the Strategy brought economic benefits to the consumer through reduced insurance premiums.