Simon Harris concerned over low numbers of gardai in roads policing unit

Taoiseach Simon Harris has said he is concerned with the low numbers of gardai in the roads policing unit amid a spike in road deaths, particularly among young people.

He said Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has committed to increasing the number of gardai in the unit this year after increases in 2023 and 2024 in the number of road fatalities.

The Taoiseach also emphasised the responsibility on each citizen to be safe on Irish roads, and said that “you don’t need a guard to tell you not to drink and drive”.

The Fine Gael leader agreed with his colleagues Transport Minister Eamon Ryan and junior minister Jack Chambers that the Road Safety Authority’s remit needed to be reviewed, but said he had confidence in the state agency.

“We’re not in a good place at all, to put it mildly, in relation to the trend regarding loss of lives and roads,” Mr Harris said on Monday, speaking in Lucan.

“We have made a lot of progress as a country and we need to ask ourselves, why is that progress being reversed? I don’t think it’s any one thing by the way, I think it’s quite a number of things.

“But I was really concerned to see over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend that the gardai detected so many people driving under the influence of drink and driving under the influence of drugs. And I think we’ve got to get real in relation to our own individual responsibilities in relation to these areas as well.”

Mr Harris said one of his first meetings as Taoiseach was with the Garda Commissioner and Justice Minister Helen McEntee last Friday, where the issue of road safety was discussed.

He said that the Garda boss assured him that he was prioritising road safety, and discussed a directive issued to members to allocate 30 minutes of road policing to each shift.

Mr Harris is also due to meet with the Road Safety Authority (RSA) on Monday.

“Thirty minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, 30 minutes multiplied by the number of guards is a significant period of time,” the Taoiseach said.

“The second assurance that he did give me and the minister was that this year, we’ll see road policing numbers grow.

“I am concerned about the level of Garda resource in road traffic policing. I know the commissioner has to make difficult decisions with the resources available to him. I want to see those resources increased, so does he, and he expects them to increase over the course of this year.

“I also don’t want that to be an excuse for anybody to get behind the wheel of a car in this country under the influence of drink or under the influence of drugs.”

He added: “You don’t need a guard to tell you not to drink and drive, you don’t need a guard to tell you not to take drugs and drive. And we really have to start having conversations in our families, in the workplace, around this sort of trend.

“We’ve seen 63 people lose their lives on Irish roads so far this year. Half of them are below the age of 30. And this is an extraordinarily serious issue.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in recent years as a country but we have seen a lot of that progress now to be reversed. The trend is concerning and I’m conscious when we talk about trends and numbers that doesn’t capture the enormity of the loss of life, the empty seat at the kitchen table.”

He said the RSA was “not an advocacy group” and wanted to hear from them as to how they can give citizens confidence that “everything that is humanly possible to be done is being done”.

Asked about the increase in road fatalities, Mr Ryan said that “we have to turn those figures around”.

“We had seen incredible progress – we were up to the 4th best in terms of road fatalities, we’ve dropped down to 7, so we need to get back up again,” the Green Party leader said.

He said lowering speeds, increased enforcement including more speed cameras, and redesigning ‘blackspots’ on Irish roads were needed to address the issue.

He also welcomed the directive from the Garda Commissioner that every Garda member should spend 30 minutes of each shift on road policing, but said more speed cameras would help alleviate the pressure on Garda numbers.

Asked whether Mr Harris was overstepping the mark, Mr Ryan said he didn’t have any problem with the Taoiseach being updated through meetings with the RSA.

Mr Chambers said the trend has been “shocking” and the government is working “collectively to try and reverse that”.

The Fianna Fail TD said that the road traffic bill, which will lower speed limits along some roads, needed to be matched with “a serious uplift in enforcement”.

“Because enforcement levels have collapsed, and you have double-digit reductions in enforcement with the reductions in the numbers in roads policing units,” he said.

He welcomed the Garda Commissioner’s directive that each garda must police the roads for 30 minutes per shift, “but that needs to be complemented with tangible allocations to roads policing units”.

He said: “We also need to bring through measures and recommendations on reforming the Road Safety Authority. It’s an agency that’s been in existence for 20 years, we’ve had a consultation on their remit, and we hope to bring recommendations to government in the summertime on how we can reform the RSA so it can really accelerate the work of our wider road safety strategy.”