Road Safety: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-30 ============================================================ Eileen Flynn (IND), Administrative Panel Never say I have never done anything for the Opposition. I will start with the truth. A total of 185 people died on Irish roads in 2025 and 141 lost their lives in the first nine months of this year. Behind those numbers are devastated families and, often, shattered communities. We saw the devastation clearly when five young men died on the M9 in August. A family in the other car was badly hurt, including a seven-year-old boy. This was a terrible tragedy. Nothing we say today can change or take away the grief from those families. We all understand why people are angry and upset. When young people die on our roads, we should all feel that pain. We should ask hard questions about why it happened. We need proper enforcement, better infrastructure and a real end to dangerous driving. Every day, we see where call-outs and TikTok videos have cost so many lives in this country and beyond for years. We see dares and it was also part of Coco's Law. We have seen young people being bullied online. It is unfortunate when five young men lost their lives here in August. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil used it as an opportunity to kick five dead bodies and not to think about the families, the mothers, the fathers, the sisters or the brothers behind those five young men. In October 2000, I was in a severely bad car crash. I broke my two legs, my two arms, my two feet and suffered some other injuries as well. I have had numerous operations. I, for one, know exactly how long is the road to recovery. In some cases, that road is a never-ending road. Next Wednesday, I will be back in Cappagh Hospital for a small procedure on my arm and here I am standing up here, 27 years later, and I am still impacted. A drunk driver crashed into the back of me. Little or nothing has changed on Irish roads in the past 27 years. When we talk about young people on our roads, we need to turn to our legislators and our politicians too when they are travelling at over 160 km per hour on the M8. That was not a mistake; that was purposefully done. Every single politician in here did not have to feel the pain of that. They did not get racist, horrible, hateful comments. It was not put onto all politicians. Although he has not been charged yet, we then saw a politician who was two times over the limit for drink-driving. That was a choice. We had five young men killed on our roads and I will end this speech by saying Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil used it to kick them. They used it to kick dead bodies. We need better legislation. We need our high-vis jackets. I live in rural Ireland and in the summer and the winter, my children walk in their high-vis jackets. I will now take a seat and I say to the Minister of State that to stop young people dying on our roads, we need enforcement, better policing and to support our gardaí to be able to deal with that. A TD said to me last week in the private session of the Traveller committee that the Traveller community glorified it and glorified them as heroes. That is a lie. Nobody within my community or my family members glorified what happened on the M9. Every single day, members of the Traveller community pray for the people who were hurt. Bring in better legislation. Hold TikTok and the social media companies to account. We had them in front of the committee last week and, by God, they never answered one question. There is no accountability. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. 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