By Paul Murphy
New speed limits ‘about as useful as a chocolate teapot’ Cllr Noel French tells Meath council. The rising toll of road deaths on Irish roads was raised at a meeting of Meath County Council today when new bye-laws implementing special speed limits were discussed by councillors. The new national speed limits are expected to come in on 31st March next year and phase two of a four-phase process for the implementation was down for discussion today.
Independent Cllr Noel French said that from what he had seen of the bye-laws he questioned why children in rural area face speed limits of 50kph as opposed to 30 kph for children outside respective schools districts. He said a 30kph limit was proposed for approach roads to schools in urban areas while in rural areas it was 50kph. While schools in Moynalty would be 30kph, schools in Kilbride, Killyon would be 50kph. All children should be treated equally, he said.
Why was there no reduction in limits in towns and villages like Summerhill and Rathmolyon where the schools were not within the urban area|? He described the proposed limits as “about as useful as a chocolate teapot”. If the current speed limits were enforced, there would be a better result.
The vast majority of motorists drove safely but there was a minority who would not pay “a blind bit of notice to signs”. “We have 40% less Gardai in our road policing units in comparison to 2009. We are not going to deliver safer roads with fewer Gardai”. Every Bank Holiday weekend there were 4,000 drivers exceeding speed limits. One hundred and forty one people had died on Irish roads so far this year, 13 more than this time last year.
Director of Services Martin Murray said that what was being presented to councillors was phase two of a four-phase national programme. When the programme was complete at 31st March next, if there were still areas that needed addressing then the council could bring in it’s own bye-laws to deal with that.
