I wish to raise road safety schemes in County Kerry. Over a long period, Councillor Jackie Healy-Rae in the Castleisland electoral area has raised this very important issue. In 2024, Kerry County Council and our excellent director of roads and transportation, Frank Hartnett, have only received €550,000 to progress road safety schemes in the entire county. This is an increase of just €7,000 from 2023. In one municipal district in Kerry that stretches from Scartaglin back to the west of Dingle, the Castleisland - Corca Dhuibhne MD, will only be able to progress one safety scheme this year due to this allocation. Kerry County Council requires €30,000, which is a small sum of money, to progress a safety scheme at Lisheen cross in Gneevgullia where there is an extensive accident history. Recently, there was another major accident at this junction involving five people and it is only a matter of time before someone is killed at that location. That project is shovel-ready but is starved of funding.

A sum of €60,000 is required to progress a safety scheme in Castleisland town at the junction of Church Street and Main Street. An extremely busy mart is located down this road and it is heavily trafficked. Another scheme requiring funding for traffic calming measures and a pedestrian crossing at an extremely busy crèche facility in Firies along with further traffic measures in Firies village where there is a big residential development. A recent traffic survey found cars going in excess of the speed limit there.

The junction at the very busy Gortatlea Mart, which provides a great service on the N21, requires a right-turning ghost island to facilitate traffic turning right. Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, in its infinite wisdom burned off the road markings a number of years ago. Another right-turning ghost island is required further up at the Glanshearoon viewing area on the N21. There have been multiple fatalities along that road.

The point I am trying to make is the Taoiseach and his Government - and rightly so - are concerned about traffic safety on our roads. The Government continually looks at different ways, and I do not disagree with the Government looking at it. However the Government is looking at certain issues, such as driver behaviour and saying speed limits should be reduced from 100 km/h to 80 km/h, 80 km/h to 60 km/h and 60 km/h to 40 km/h. I do not agree with that. I would never vote for that and I will tell the Taoiseach why. I have no monopoly of being right in this House and I am not waving my hand at the Taoiseach and saying he is wrong. The Taoiseach's heart is in the right place but I say that what I would call simplistic political reactionary actions such as that are not what is required. What is required is to fund us, for instance in County Kerry and every other county in the country. Every other Deputy in this House has the same issues. They could stand up and name crosses, junctions and locations. Why is the Government not seeing to those accident locations where people are being injured and putting themselves in danger?

I thank the Deputy.

I ask the Government to look at the bigger picture, the deer roaming onto our roads and the fact local authorities are not cutting hedges and keeping trees back to gives us sight distance on our road. I am asking the Government to look at the bigger picture and when it comes to road safety and the RSA-----

I thank the Deputy. We are way over time now please.

-----to not just be looking at the one thing all of the time - penalty points and driver behaviour on the roads. Look at our responsibilities. It is all of our faults that we are not spending money at those locations. I am not blaming the Taoiseach; I am blaming all of us.

Please Deputy, we are way over time.

We should be doing more to help people on the ground.

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. At the outset, as we approach another bank holiday weekend, I am sure everyone in this House will join in calling for people to be very conscious of driver behaviour on the roads this weekend. I will get to the Deputy's direct point in a moment.

Let me actually get to it now because I agree with the Deputy to a point. I definitely agree that road safety is not down to any one thing. If we are extraordinarily serious about road safety and reversing the worrying trend we have seen in deaths and injuries on Irish roads this year, we need to look at every lever at our disposal and everything we can possibly do. I will come back to that in a moment.

What we also know, and I am sure the Deputy will not disagree on this, is that driver behaviour - what the RSA calls "killer behaviours" - accounts for a very significant majority of deaths and accidents on Irish roads. We need to be very conscious of that. Speed, drink driving and drug driving kills. There is the importance of wearing a seat belt. The basic things we have been trying to ingrain in Irish culture and psyche for many years are as important, if not more important, than ever. Not using a mobile phone while driving is another major one. I have met a lot of people on this issue over the last number of weeks, including the Medical Bureau of Road Safety, An Garda Síochána, the Road Safety Authority, local authorities and TII. We need to continue at every opportunity to get that message out about driver behaviours and the impact they have on road safety. I know the Deputy gets that.

I will clarify the Government's position on speed limits. In legislation the Government passed, local authorities are empowered with regard to final decisions on speed limits because I believe in local government and that local councillors will always have good and important knowledge that we perhaps would not have here in the Dáil. Speed limits and speed limit levels are important but allowing that understanding that the local authority would be pre-eminent is also quite important.

The Deputy is also right that the quality of roads, investment in roads, road repairs, road safety and working with the local guys is also very important. It is a sad state of fact that when we see accidents happen on roads we often see them happen on the same stretch of road or bend in the road - what used to be known as the accident blackspots back in the day. That is why we want to continue to invest more in safety schemes as well.

I have a list of a number of allocations the Government has made to Kerry County Council, including in 2024. Allocations of €30.14 million were received by Kerry County Council for works to be conducted under various grant types. Under safety schemes specifically, the Government has provided funding for five safety schemes. The Deputy may have referenced some of them already. They are Whitebridge, Two Mile school, Abbeydorney village, Castlegregory village, Tailor's Row and Ardfert village. We have also provided capital funding of €9.7 million, which has been allocated to the protection and renewal of the national road network in Kerry.

With regard to the specific issues and stretches of road the Deputy has raised, if he provides those details to me in the context of road safety I will also ask that the Department of Transport and TII look at them and work with Kerry County Council on these matters.

If the Government is serious about saving lives on our roads, the local authorities will need a massive increase in funding for road safety schemes. The RSA recently spent €800,000 on one single television advert for its 30 km/h town campaign which in my personal opinion was a glorified tourism advert for the town of Clonakilty. Yet Kerry County Council only received, again, €550,000 for the entire county to progress road safety schemes in 2024, schemes that will have an impact on our roads.

Money is being squandered on TV adverts that have little or no effect. It would be far better spent by the Frank Hartnetts of Ireland in our county councils to effect real changes on our roads.

I want to pay tribute to the great soldiers and people on the ground working for Kerry County Council, and for local authorities throughout the country. They are the people who are out in bad weather trying to keep roads clear, filling potholes, doing tarring and skirting, laying surface dressing and doing maintenance work on all of our behalf. I want to compliment every one of those people here today and acknowledge their work in wet and inclement weather.

I am trying to be agreeable on this because the Deputy raises valid and important points about road safety and we want to build a political and societal consensus around road safety which is a major issue. I have a point of difference with the Deputy to TV adverts. There is behavioural science that shows the importance of those impactful ads. Everybody in this House and anybody watching this debate at home can think of some of the impactful ads that have been broadcast over the years and the impact they have had in generating conversations around kitchen tables, in the workplace, at the water cooler and all of that. That is good.

On roads, I would respectfully say that the €550,000 refers to five specific roads projects under the title of road safety schemes. The totality of funding we provide to Kerry for regional and local road networks, which has a contribution to road safety, is €30.14 million for this year. We have also provided €1 million in current funding to Kerry County Council to fund regular maintenance operations, including winter maintenance and route lighting. The past number of months have been horrific in terms of rain. That has had a real impact on roads. I join the Deputy in paying tribute to all local authority staff for the work they have done and I hope Government in the coming days is in a position to recognise the impact that the weather has had on roads and support our local authorities in a practical sense in that way.