I thank the Chairman for giving me the opportunity to make this presentation to the committee and to answer any questions it may put to us.
Approximately 380 people will die on our roads this year. We also estimate that approximately 3,000 will be seriously injured. That is 144 deaths and 1,200 serious injuries more than should occur. These deaths and injuries are entirely preventable. We know from a policy perspective exactly what we should do. Deaths and serious injuries from road traffic collisions are not the only needless and preventable tragedies in Ireland but they are interesting from a policy and process implementation perspective because we know from our own experience and that of others how to reduce this carnage to a minimum. We also know from objective research which we have furnished to the committee that doing so would benefit the Exchequer, the Government and society, economically and socially. It is a classic case of the common good.
The question is why we will not invest the resources in a planned and timely manner to save lives and prevent serious injuries every year. Government works — when it chooses to use them, it has the will, ability and resources. There is a variety of excellent examples, including the development of social partnership from 1987, the development of the International Financial Services Centre, the unequivocal commitment to European monetary union in 1992 and, in health-related matters, the smokeless fuel ban in Dublin and, more recently, the successful implementation of the ban on smoking in public places. In each of these cases policy focused on the desired outcome and was made to work. These examples are taken from a chapter by Professor Ray Kinsella in a forthcoming book on public policy and the treatment of elderly persons but the same cannot be said of the Government's road safety strategy. It was very nearly there in 2003 but investment was not sustained. This policy failure has resulted, to date, in a total of 1,000 needless serious injuries and lives lost.
To balance this, there is a success story for the Exchequer, the Government, the community and the insurance industry in road safety and the wider work safety environment. This success has transpired in recent years through a combination of actions, for example, the Motor Insurance Advisory Board, under the chairmanship of Dorothea Dowling, and its recommendations; the setting up of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, under Patricia Byron; the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004 and a range of health and safety policy and legislative items, as well as road safety policy and legislation. In addition, the insurance industry has undertaken certain activities which have reduced the incidence of fraud and greatly improved risk management. These factors have combined to reduce the numbers of collisions, deaths and injuries in recent years, as well as workplace deaths and injuries. They have achieved faster and more efficient settlement of personal injury claims with greater efficiency to come, and a reduction in motor insurance premiums, depending on how one measures it, of between 20% and 40%.
Within this success lies spectacular failure, specifically in respect of the road safety strategy. This, however, is not an exercise in blaming or criticising the Government alone. The failure in this case is more serious because it challenges every elected representative and other professionals. It is a chronic failure of process and a fatally flawed approach which is ineffective and inefficient. We have seen other recent examples of this flawed policy process in IT project failures, the manner in which decentralisation was planned and launched and is being effected, as well as the nursing home charges debacle, a process failure that travelled through 11 Administrations.
The road safety programme is a particularly good example of this policy and process failure because it is an investment programme. One spends scarce public money on enforcement, engineering and education and evaluates the results by counting the benefits. The evidence from objective research which we have furnished to the committee shows that this is highly beneficial. Resources are released in accident and emergency units and acute hospitals; other emergency services are released; welfare payments are not required because people are uninjured; taxes are paid because people are alive who would otherwise be dead; insurance premiums reduce; and the prevention and detection of crime increases, as the Australians have shown. People are alive and uninjured. The community, the Government and the Exchequer benefit. The problem is that money must be spent by the Departments of Transport, Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Education and Science and the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. The benefits are felt in the Departments of Health and Children, Social and Family Affairs, Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Finance, but we have no process to put in place such a programme.
Road safety is treated as just another cost. There is no budget for it; no one measures the benefits or joins up the thinking; no one is responsible or accountable. There is no will, no management and no such process. For example, the Minister for Transport introduced the penalty points system in November 2002, knowing that there was no administrative process to support it. The Garda Síochána was given responsibility for enforcing a system of detection which would result in penalty points with no administrative support. It is a matter of public record that the Departments of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and Finance spent 18 months arguing over the allocation of three or four people to provide the spec for the computer system that would be needed. That is the nonsense to which I refer.
I ask the committee to look later at the one page document from the Department of Finance which we have included as Appendix 5. It is a public document submitted to the Joint Committee on Transport in June 2003. As far as I am aware, that is the only public comment the Department of Finance has ever made on the issue of road safety. I am not criticising the Department but merely stating a fact. The document is a high level comment on the status of the road safety strategy adopted by the Government.
