Minister was ‘spinning me a load of nonsense’

A bereaved mother has accused Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe of “buck-passing” by failing to impose a 20km/h speed limit in housing estates.

Fri, 20 Mar, 2015 - 00:00

Evelyn Ring

Roseann Brennan’s six-year-old son Jake died in her arms after being knocked down by a car near his home in Lintown Grove, Kilkenny, last June.

Determined that her son’s name and spirit would live on, Ms Brennan founded campaign group Jake’s Legacy and began a fight to introduce a mandatory 20km/h limit in residential areas.

Ms Brennan told Mr Donohoe that giving local authorities an option to introduce a lower limit would not work, as many housing estates were privately owned.

“I said that to him ‘what about the private housing estates?’, and there is a lot of them out there,” said Ms Brennan. “He said: ‘Oh God, that’s down to the local county council,’ ”

However, Ms Brennan, a mother of three, said she lived on a private estate where the speed limit was 50km/h and that would remain unchanged unless the council took it over.

“A lot of private housing estates were built very badly and the council will not take them in charge until they are at an agreed standard,” she said.

Roseann Brennan with a picture of her son Jake in Linton Grove, where he was killed by a car. She has accused Transport Minister Pascal Donohoe of ‘buck passing’ in his response to her protests.

Under guidelines announced by Mr Donohoe yesterday, new urban ‘Slow Zones’ in residential areas to reduce the limit to 30km/h would be introduced.

A housing estate that has a public road going through it would be 30km/h under the new proposals.

Last month, Ms Brennan led a four-day Dáil protest in a bid to have the 20km/h speed limit introduced.

“I knew that the minister was spinning me with a load of nonsense when I was outside the Dáil,” she said.

“He should be man enough to say what he means and he has not done that.

“He led everyone to believe that he was passing Jake’s Law when, really, he was leaving it at the discretion of local authorities to introduce a 20km/h limit.”

Ms Brennan felt Mr Donohoe was just trying to “look good” in advance of next month’s Road Safety Authority conference on children and road safety in Dublin.