It has been a dark few weeks on Irish roads, but what action is being taken to make them safer? Minister Seán Canney explains.

A meeting has taken place with senior officials from Transport Infrastructure Ireland and the Road Safety Authority, as well as officials from the Departments of Transport, Justice and the Garda Commissioner to discuss ways to help make Irish roads safer.

A rise in incidents involving vehicles driving the wrong way on motorways has seen a number of deaths occur, many of which were young people.

Speaking to The Hard Shoulder, Minister of State with responsibility for road safety, Sean Canney, shared some insights from the meeting, mostly explaining the efforts being made to make the roads safer.

He explained: "First of all, in terms of the Gardaí and justice legislation, the Gardaí informed me, the assistant commissioner Perry was there today and he explained, that now from a road policing point of view, the Gardaí have put in place and now have in place an inspector in each division with sole responsibility for road policing, which is very good, and that will give a focus to the road policing units in each division.

"Secondly, we have legislation which is now going to be drafted in pursuit of correspondence we got today from justice to the two parts to it. 

"Number one would be in relation to the protection of the Gardaí when they're in pursuit of people so that they get the protection of the law in the course of their duty.

"We now have what we need. We will be discussing with the Egis office with a view to bring forward legislation on that and also to look at, you know, the fact that driving down a motorway is an aggravated crime and that there needs to be serious penalties for that and the serious legislation that we can bring forward there as well.

"We expect to do that fairly, fairly quickly. And the discussions between my own department who are responsible for bringing forward road safety legislation will start next week."

As many of the people involved in these incidents have been under the age of 18, the question was posed to Minister Canney about what legal ramifications they will face.

He insisted that if they are committing a "serious crime" that it is important that "there are consequences for that irrespective of what age you are".

"We can't all hide behind, 'Oh they're young' or 'They're innocent. They don't realise this or the other.'

"Most people in this country, most young people, act accordingly. They act with respect for everybody else."

As for technology, AI technology is being looked at to help get quicker reaction times to incidents like these, and they're also investigating ways to alert motorists to the fact that something has gone wrong with the motorway and give them enough time to react and potentially get off the road.

The main takeaway from these discussions is that this type of deliberate dangerous driving and putting people's lives at risk will "not be tolerated".

Main image: A road safety photocall in Dublin Picture by: Sam Boal / RollingNews.ie