The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has told an Oireachtas Committee it will resume sharing of key crash data with local authorities by the end of this year.
Speaking at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), RSA CEO Sam Waide said that following consultation with the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), an agreement has been reached for collision data to be shared.
In April, Prime Time reported that road engineering teams in local authorities were not able to view data on road collisions which have happened in Ireland over the last six years due to a GDPR concern.
This means that local authorities, who are responsible for maintaining the vast majority of Ireland’s road network, have not had access to up-to-date data on crashes.
Data detailing time, type, cause, speed and other factors is used by road engineers across Europe to identify and inform safety-related design and layout changes.
Read more: How a lack of crash data is hampering Ireland’s road safety aims
In his opening statement to the PAC, Mr Waide said: “I am pleased to confirm we have successfully concluded our consultation with the Data Protection Commission and secured agreement to advance the necessary legislative amendments to support the sharing of collision data.”
“This positive outcome is the result of months of dedicated work and extensive collaboration with key organisations to resolve data protection issues and address the DPC’s previous queries and concerns,” Mr Waide said.
The RSA’s CEO also noted that the Department of Transport is to move forward with the necessary Ministerial Order [under Section 8 of the Road Safety Authority Act] to allow for resumption of sharing of the complete dataset.
The issue around the sharing of collision data has been ongoing for a number of years.
Until 2020, data provided by the RSA, originating from the Garda PULSE system, was uploaded onto a detailed interactive map system which could be accessed by the road engineering teams in the various local authorities around the country.
However, early that year, a legal issue arose within the RSA about whether, under GDPR legislation, it could share the data with several public bodies, including the local authorities.
Prime Time understands the latest data uploaded into the interactive map system related to collisions which occurred in 2018.
Between 2022 and November 2023, the RSA says it shared ‘key variables’ on collisions with the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA), which maintained the map system for the various local authorities.
However, due to the GDPR issue, that data was not uploaded to the mapping system by the LGMA.
In late 2023, with the GDPR issue still outstanding, all the pre-2019 data was also removed from the mapping system. As a result, local authority roads engineers do not have any access to the collision data map.
Experts Prime Time spoke to said local authorities are therefore ‘shooting in the dark’ when it comes to making key decisions about road improvements.
During his appearance at PAC, Mr Waide told the committee that despite the ongoing issue with GDPR, “local authorities continue to receive analysis on high-level collision locations for the national road network both from Transport Infrastructure Ireland and the Department of Transport.”
The national road network makes up around 12% of the entire road network in Ireland. It is the responsibility of Transport Infrastructure Ireland. The regional and local road networks, which makes up around 80% of Ireland’s roads, are managed by local authorities.
The Department of Transport previously confirmed to Prime Time that the analysis they provided to the local authorities only covered the national road network, meaning the latest collision information local authority road engineers have about local road networks is six years old.
So far this year, 91 people have died on Irish roads, an increase of 11% on the same period last year. The most recent fatality occurred in Waterford in the early hours of this morning.
RSA CEO Sam Waide also addressed this increase at the PAC, informing the committee that the RSA has spent an additional €3 million in 2024 on radio and digital audio campaigns that focused on mobile phones use behind the wheel as well as drug driving.
