Drivers who commit motoring offences in the Republic will soon have their transgressions recognised in Northern Ireland and vice versa under a deal reached today between the Irish and British governments.
Martin Cullen
Minister for Transport Martin Cullen signed an agreement with his British counterpart Stephen Ladyman in Belfast.
Speaking following their meeting, Mr Cullen said tough law and stringent enforcement may be required to change motorists' attitudes towards the rising death toll on the roads.
He said there needed to be a change in attitude among motorists towards drink driving and speeding.
He also said there needed to be co-operation between government and other industries such as the drinks industry to tackle the root causes of the carnage on Ireland's roads.
"This is an issue which shouldn't be played as a political football. Sadly the one stark fact in all of this is that over 86% of the people killed on our roads is down to driver behaviour," he said.
"We are just going to have to make tough law and we will have to have tough enforcement for everybody to drive home the message that you have to behave within the law on our roads. One of the clear facts of it is if people at the moment under the existing law remained within the speeding limits and didn't drink drive we wouldn't be having this conversation."
The number of deaths on the Republic's roads has topped 50 already this year, prompting criticism of the Government's handling of the problem from the Opposition.
Mr Cullen said today's agreement with Britain to recognise different jurisdictions, motoring offences and penalties would help in the effort to crackdown on dangerous driving.
However he insisted there had to be a collective effort to tackle drink driving and speeding.
"We are all equally responsible. I think the only way we are going to tackle this is collectively to get a mindset changed. We are obviously putting very substantial legislation in place, setting up the Road Safety Authority which will have a very strong remit," he added.
"We are educating people through our schools. We have set up a new grouping in Government at a high level chaired by myself and which involves the ministers for Justice, Finance, Education and Health to make a broad cross-cutting approach to drill down into young people before they get onto the roads as to what they can do. Obviously we want to make people more and more aware of their responsibilities for the rest of us along the roads."
A joint communiqué was issued following the British-Irish Council of Transport Ministers, which was chaired by Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Shaun Woodward
They said: "Ministers reviewed progress to date on the group's work programme which included an exchange of letters between the UK and Irish Ministers on a proposed bilateral agreement on the mutual recognition of driving disqualifications.
"It was agreed that over the coming year work would also be taken forward on a number of other important issues including the treatment of lesser road traffic infringements and research into the issues surrounding drugs and driving."
The ministers also agreed to work together on promoting sustainable transport.
Additional reporting: PA