Senator John McGahon- speech from 31 May 2022

Acting Leader, today I really want to discuss a very important issue which is traffic safety outside our schools and in particular primary schools and the reason why I'm doing that is because I attended a public meeting last night in Ballurgan in County Louth with Ballurgan National School which had over 40 parents there and some people may say this is too much of a parochial issue or something like that to bring up in the Senate but I'm bringing it up specifically because after 10 plus years people in the Ballurgan community cannot get a basic necessity like traffic calming measures outside their primary school and parents will not allow their children to walk to school they have to drive their kids to school because it's on a regional road it has such a high volume of traffic going past it every single day it's the only school on the entire Cooley Peninsula that doesn't have any form of traffic calming measures outside it and the reason I'm bringing that up in the Senate today is because after nearly 10 plus years of this issue being raised we're still at a crux where that Louth County Council are refusing to put in anything of real substantial measures that will reduce the speed on this regional road they've put in traffic measures like signage and stuff like this but we need a physical deterrent there in the form of ramps or something along like that and the reason why I'm bringing it up today is because I think that there should be some sort of a policy originating from the Department of Education which provides guidance to schools and local authorities about the type of traffic calming measures that can be outside schools it shouldn't be an a la carte menu where some schools and one communities have traffic calming measures and then other schools don't and the important thing about Ballergan National School is it has an ASD unit as well so there's vulnerable children in this school who may not have spatial awareness may not have the awareness of safety and danger that's posed them right outside their front door and I would really appreciate a debate in this house about traffic safety in particular outside our schools in rural communities like Ballergan and County I think it's a debate that has been overlooked in recent times because there's a different approach to it whether it's different local authorities there's a different approach to whether it's in different communities or different areas and I think we need a wide scale approach right across the country for traffic calming measures outside our primary schools and that's a debate that I would really welcome with the Minister at some stage in the future the Minister at some stage in the future