Ex-PD minister Liz O’Donnell to chair Road Safety Authority

Former Progressive Democrat minister Liz O'Donnell has been nominated as the new head of the Road Safety Authority.

In a statement issued after a Cabinet meeting today, Minister for Transport Paschal Donohoe he had appointed Ms O'Donnell as Chairperson Designate of the RSA for a period of five years.

Ms O’Donnell will become the chairman designate pending an appearance before the Oireachtas Committee in Transport to confirm the appointment.

She is filling the position relinquished by Gay Byrne, who stepped down at the beginning of September after eight years in the role.

Byrne completed one full five-year term as chairman and was asked to remain in his position by the then minister for transport, Leo Varadkar, and did so for three years until he reached his eightieth birthday.

He was asked to remain in the position for a further two years but declined.

Mr Donohoe said the appointment was being made “in advance of the introduction of new procedures for State Board appointments, in view of the urgent need to fill the vacant post which is crucial to our efforts to combat road deaths.”

Ms O’Donnell’s appointment comes as the number of children killed on Ireland’s roads more than doubled this year. Mr Donohoe recently said the surge was “incredibly worrying” after years of decreases in child road deaths.

She is seen as being a very strong media performer and also, crucially, has no links to either coalition party and therefore the appointment is unlikely to prompt allegations of cronyism.

During his tenure, Mr Byrne repeatedly criticised the impact of the reduction in Garda resources for the Traffic Corps.

Since the RSA was set up in 2006, road fatalities dropped from 368 to a record low of 162 in 2012. However, fatalities rose to 190 last year and are on course to increase again this year.

Ms O'Donnell provides consultancy, lecturing and advisory services for corporate, educational and various other organisations in the field of government relations and public affairs and is an opinion columnist in the Irish Independent newspaper.

She was born in Dublin, studied at Trinity College Law School, and after graduation embarked on a career as a lawyer. She was first elected to Dublin City Council in 1991 for the Rathmines Ward.

She had earlier been vice chair of the Women’s Political Association and worked on the presidential campaign of Mary Robinson.

She was first elected to the Dáil in 1992 and served as a Progressive Democrats TD for Dublin South from 1992 to 2007.

Her career in the Dáil began as PD spokeswoman on health and social welfare, from 1992-93.

Following the June 1997 general election, she was involved in negotiating the programme for the coalition government between Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, along with her then party colleague, Robert Molloy.

In July 1997, she was appointed Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs with responsibility for Overseas Development Assistance and Human Rights.

In this capacity, she had a role in Anglo-Irish relations. She was a member of the government’s negotiating team in the multi-party talks at Stormont, which culminated in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

In 2007, she was promoted to Cabinet as Minister of State to the Government on the retirement of Robert Molloy.

She also served as chief whip and deputy leader of the PDs.

Ms O’Donnell retired from politics following the PD meltdown at the 2007 general election.