As part of Action 6 of the Government’s Road Safety Strategy a review is underway to examine and review the framework for setting of speed limits including rural speed limits and the introduction of a 30km/h default speed limit in urban areas. This review is nearing completion and as part of its work a detailed assessment is being carried out on the existing framework of speed limits including for local roads in rural areas.
In Ireland roads are classified as National, Regional and Local roads in accordance with Section 10 of the Roads Act, 1993. In turn the Road Traffic Act, 2004 sets out default speed limits for the road network as being 120km/h for Motorways, 100km/h for National roads, 80km/h for Regional roads and 80km/h for Local roads.
For public roads in each county, Section 10 of the Roads Act 1993 sets out that a local authority shall maintain and make available for public inspection a schedule and a map of public roads in their administrative area. Local authorities are responsible for classifying and scheduling Local roads with the Minister of Transport being responsible for classifying and scheduling National and Regional Roads.
Special Speed Limits are speed limits that are specified in bye-laws adopted by the vote of the Elected Members of Local Authorities. Section 9 of the Road Traffic Act 2004, as amended, sets out the range of Special Speed Limits that may be applied through bye-laws. The current special speed limits are 120km/h, 100km/h, 80 km/h, 60km/h, 50km/h, 40km/h, 30km/h and 20km/h. Local authorities have the discretion to decide on varying these limits through Special Speed Limit bye-laws for roads within their administrative area. The making of such bye-laws is a reserved function of the elected members of the council.
Further, my Department understands that under Action 123 of the Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030 Bus Éireann has committed to examining various legislative and non-legislative approaches to promoting the safety of children disembarking school buses on potentially hazardous rural roads. Officials from my Department have engaged with Bus Éireann on this matter and agreement has been reached that this goal be best pursued by the development of internal, operational policy rather than by legislative means.
As such, given the work that is already underway, I do not propose to instruct my Officials to organise a meeting with counterparts in the Department of Education at this time.
