Road Safety: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Tom Clonan (IND), University of Dublin

The Minister of State is very welcome to the House to discuss this important issue. At Christmas 2007, my two oldest children were only nippers. They were five and six at the time. They were getting ready to go and spend time with their grandmother, Margaret Moran, in Nenagh in County Tipperary. She was very excited about the impending visit. She was a very fit and healthy 67-year-old lady. Margaret went to the local supermarket on the Main Street in Nenagh to pick out a Christmas tree. The young guy there told her not to worry and that he would drop it up to the house for her. She went ahead of him and was walking back home. Just opposite the creamery, she was struck by a car. She suffered a head injury and subsequently died in Cork University Hospital.
I saw Margaret in intensive care. She was kept ventilated until her daughters came back from Australia to see her for one last time. There was not a mark on her, except for one small little bruise on her forehead. The swelling of her brain, however, meant that she lost her life. I saw the devastation her death had on that family, which had echoes across the world, including in Australia, and to all of her siblings in Ireland and the UK. I also saw the impact it had on my boys and the questions that they asked me about what had happened.
That experience has happened to 846 families in the last five years. An average of 140 families go through this experience every year. From my work advocating for people with disabilities, I know that there are thousands of people who have acquired injuries through road traffic accidents. They have survived, but their lives have been changed forever. They have acquired brain injuries and an impaired ability to walk. I know of one vulnerable road user, a cyclist, who was working in one of the major law firms in Dublin. He was a very fit guy, using his Strava while he went in and out to work, competing against himself.
He was involved in a road traffic collision. He is now paralysed. His marriage has collapsed and he is now homeless.
Our perception of threat is something that is very important. We hear a lot about drone sightings, which remind me a little of the moving statues of the late 1980s, but that is for another day's debate. There is kind of a mass hysteria about all of these vague threats, but the most dangerous thing a person does every day in the 21st century environment we are in is get behind the wheel of a car, get onto a motorcycle as I do or, in particular, get onto a bicycle. People need to think.
The statistics are interesting in relation to the fatalities here. The majority of them are men. Of those, the vast majority are under the age of 26. There has been a development in recent years with an increase in fatality rates among older drivers. That is something we need to address and think about. However, when I got my first car in 1987, it was a 15-year-old Renault 12. It was a 1.3 litre petrol engine. If I tried to get it up to 50 mph, I would hear every bit of it rattle. My youngest fella, who has just passed his driving test, now sits into a 2.2 litre turbo diesel vehicle. Speed is an issue. It is one of the dominant factors in road fatalities, injuries and collisions. The vehicles we have available to us now, such as electric vehicles, scooters and e-bikes, can achieve high speeds quickly.
I remember how invulnerable I felt in my Renault 12 at the age of 20, until I lost control of it. I was teaching in Lucan and I used to drive from Finglas every day through the Strawberry Beds. One morning, I encountered black ice and completely lost control of the vehicle. It was not until that happened that I realised that I was vulnerable.
Most of the victims of road traffic collisions and people who cause them are young men under the age of 26. The frontal lobe does not develop fully until you are about 25 or 26. In fact, in the United States in some areas of medicine such as paediatrics, particularly in psychiatry and areas like that, men are considered children until they are 25. We have to find a way of targeting those young guys. There are two ways to do that. We have them as a captive audience, literally and metaphorically, in schools. I know as a former primary school teacher that teachers in schools all around the country could tell you who is likely to be involved in a road traffic accident. We can educate them there.
As a motorcyclist, I have noticed lately that I am constantly being overtaken. I have a 400 cc Yamaha motorcycle and I am constantly being overtaken by people on e-bikes and e-scooters. Very often, they do not have any protective equipment. I have also noticed increasingly that cyclists, young cyclists in particular, indicate by putting out an arm and then manoeuvre. They do not look behind them. I always try to get eye contact with the driver when manoeuvring. They call it the look back or lifesaver when on a motorcycle. There is a requirement for education. Where could we do that? Most likely in school.
In relation to that young cohort, I hear advertisements on the radio, such as RTÉ, talking about road safety and encountering unexpected hazards. The target audience does not listen to the radio. They do not listen to talk radio or watch the news. They are online. The people who are expert in targeting our young people with TikTok should be harnessed. Google, TikTok and Meta, the companies that are resident here, should pro bono give back to society and devise a way of reaching this vulnerable cohort of people.
Due to our son's disability, we do not fly on holidays. For the last 25 years, I have been driving to the Continent every year. I have driven all over Europe over the last 25 years. When you leave this jurisdiction, one of the first things you notice is the visibility of roads policing and enforcement in other jurisdictions. That has an impact on driver behaviour. I rarely see An Garda Síochána on the roads here. That is not a criticism of An Garda Síochána, but it is a matter of resourcing. I know that the Minister of State will be lobbying his colleagues in Cabinet for that investment.
We have personal experience of the tragedy involved in all of this, but I have seen the Minister of State intervene personally, as recently as over the summer when we had the wrong-way driving down the motorway, and take on a leadership role. The definition of leadership is to serve others. I commend him and thank him for that. I do not want to use the pun, but it is clear to me that at least somebody is not asleep at the wheel, whether it is the RSA or other authorities. I commend the Minister of State in his work and wish him well. I hope that he goes a good way towards achieving the target of reducing road fatalities by 50% in the next number of years.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-09-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-30