Plans to reduce speed limits on many of Ireland’s roads will have a “significant impact” on improving safety, a minister has said.
Minister of state Jack Chambers, who has responsibility for roads safety, said he will bring proposals to lower several speed limit baselines to Cabinet colleagues later this month.
The speed limit review has been ongoing for two years, but Mr Chambers said work to implement the reductions would be fast-tracked amid concerns around rising road deaths in Ireland.
As of Sunday evening, there had been 127 deaths on Irish roads so far in 2023. That is 23 more than the same period last year and 38 more than the same period in 2019.
A third of all deaths in 2023 have been people under the age of 25 and a quarter have been pedestrians.
There were 25 deaths in August alone.
Proposals set to be brought to Cabinet would see the speed limit on rural and local roads reduced from 80km/h to 60km/h.
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In urban, residential and other built-up areas the limit would be cut from 50km/h to 30km/h.
The limit on main arterial routes in towns and cities would be capped at 50km/h.
On national secondary roads, the baseline would fall from 100km/h to 80km/h.
Current limits of 120km/h on motorways, 100km/h on national primary roads and 80km/h on regional roads will stay the same.
Under the proposals, local authorities will have the discretion to increase limits on roads where baselines have been reduced, if engineers deem a higher limit is appropriate to the road design.
“This is about setting a better, safer baseline and then revising limits upwards where it’s safe to do so, rather than the present system which is specialist speed limits being brought backwards from a higher baseline,” Mr Chambers told RTE Radio One.
“If we’re serious about strengthening our road safety across the country, I think it’s better to have a much more appropriate system that’s consistent, that’s balanced and promotes road safety.”
Mr Chambers said he hoped to bring a road safety Bill before the Oireachtas this term and he said the timeframe for developing detailed guidance for local authorities would be reduced from one year to around three months.
But he acknowledged that it could be late 2024 and into 2025 before speed limits were reduced, as local authorities had to undertake a significant exercise of assessing all roads affected.
“This is a measure which will have a significant impact on improving road safety but to implement legislation and policy of this scale on essentially a network that’s nearly 100,000 kilometres of road and for each local authority to go through that process, that is the general timeline around it.”
Mr Chambers described the rising death rate as “shocking”.
“127 people have died this year which has caused so much devastation for families and so many tragedies that have shocked the nation,” he said.
On Monday, Justice Minister Helen McEntee announced a 20% increase in the use of speed cameras on Irish roads in response to what she described as “worrying trends” around increasing road fatalities.
Ms McEntee said an additional 1.2 million euro is to be allocated for GoSafe vans, providing for an extra 1,500 hours of monitoring per month until the end of this year.
The Government is examining a range of potential legislative moves aimed at changing driving behaviours.
One measure would see penalty points handed out for multiple offences committed in one incident, rather than just for the most serious offence.
More than 860 drivers were caught speeding during a Garda “slow down” day initiative this week.
The proactive 24-hour operation that began on Monday morning was rolled out amid a significant rise in road deaths in Ireland.
One of the 865 motorists detected driving in excess of the speed limit was travelling at 161km/h in a 100km/h zone in Co Louth.
All of those drivers caught will now receive a 160 euro fixed charge notice in the post and have three penalty points applied to their licences.
