Government must explain how it will restructure the RSA, says O'Gorman

Vivienne Clarke

Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman has called on the government to take a different approach and explain what steps it is going to take to resource and restructure the Road Safety Authority.

The RSA was an organisation trying to bring in enough money from various fees to allow it to operate, he told RTÉ radio’s Today with David McCullagh show.

“It's trying to deal with delays to driver tests, and is also trying to save lives on our roads. There's too many different jobs being done by the one organisation, at a time when last year we had the highest number of road fatalities in many years. It's not working.”

O’Gorman said the previous reform plan was “the right way to go” but that the current government had taken a different approach.

“We need them to explain how they're actually going to take steps to resource the Road Safety Authority, and restructure it, so it can actually refocus on that role of saving lives on our roads.”

O’Gorman also said it was unacceptable for e-scooters to be marketed for sale to children.

“We've seen significant research from the Irish College of Physicians, that young people in particular have had very severe accidents, and have had life-altering injuries as a result of use of e-scooters.

“The present rule, whereby it's just a question of it being illegal to use them, isn't working. I think we have to make them illegal now, at the point of sale, and stop these large companies marketing e-scooters directly towards young children. But also marketing those that go at speeds above 20 km per hour.”

“We have to look at the regulations around how e-scooters are lit. Just the very design of them, they're so low, it often means that if a user is using the correct lighting, they're actually really hard to see, particularly backlighting. And looking at ways how maybe the red light at the back could be beamed onto the back of the e-scooter user.”