Councillor says Ireland accepts the number of road deaths as “inevitable” and calls for road safety to be treated as a national emergency.

Independent Sligo County Councillor, and Chair of the Sligo Local Community Safety Partnership, Marie Casserly has said that the recent national emphasis on e-scooter safety “shouldn’t distract or water down” from a focus on road deaths generally.

On The Hard Shoulder, Cllr. Casserly said that the number of people dying on Ireland’s roads has been “increasing year-on-year since 2021.”

This is despite the number of road deaths moving in “a downward trajectory” until 2021.

She said 116 people have died on Irish roads this year. Road Deaths Ireland corroborates this figure, but An Garda Síochána note 101 deaths in 2026. 190 people died on Irish roads in 2025.

Cllr. Casserly said that despite a governmental plan for zero road deaths by 2050, “we’re going in the opposite direction.”

Letter to Government

In May, Cllr. Casserly wrote to the Taoiseach, Tánaiste, the Minister for Health, and the Ministers for Transport, calling for the issue of road deaths to be treated as a national emergency.

In her letter, she called for international experts in transport, road safety, and engineering to meet with An Garda Síochána and clinicians working in emergency medicine and rehabilitation.

She believed this meeting would allow the Government to “identify the interventions to reduce road deaths.

‘If it were a virus, there would be emergency meetings’

Cllr. Casserly believes that if a similar number of people were dying every week from a virus or toxin, the Government would “mobilise every department, there’d be action plans, [and] there’d be a whole of Government response.”

Cllr. Casserly notes how some cities, having implemented “safer infrastructure, segregated infrastructure, [and] new technology,” now have 0 pedestrian deaths per year.

She believes that if similar technological changes were made on Irish roads, this would reduce the number of deaths.