141% increase in Limerick prosecutions for driving whilst holding a mobile phone

Cynthia Ní Mhurchú appeals for Limerick drivers to put down the phone this coming bank holiday weekend

Cynthia Ní Mhurchú, Ireland South MEP candidate, has described as worrying figures which show a 141% increase in the amount of Limerick drivers prosecuted by Gardai for the offence of driving whilst holding a mobile phone between 2022 and 2023. Figures that Ni Mhurchú obtained from Gardai show that there were 162 fixed charge notices issued for using a mobile phone whilst driving in Q3 2022 in Limerick. This figure jumped to 391 in Q3 2023 - an unexpected increase of over 141% over 12 months.

This comes on the back of a survey by insurance company Aviva which found that almost a third of drivers have admitted to using their mobile phones while driving.

Cynthia Ní Mhurchú has appealed to Limerick drivers to put down the phone whilst driving in advance of this bank holiday weekend in Limerick.

"We have been driving across the southern counties of Ireland this past month and it is frightening to see the amount of people texting and taking calls whilst driving. I would appeal to drivers to slow down and put the phone down. A call or text is not worth losing their life over. 70 people have lost their lives on our roads so far in 2024, a massive jump on 2023 figures. I feel that this is down to poor driver behaviour and the poor condition of some of our rural roads"

European funds for our rural roads

Ní Mhurchú has also raised the poor condition of our rural roads and has backed calls from the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) for a Europe wide investment programme to make our rural roads safer. The ETSC recently released a report which shows that around 10,000 people died on rural, non-motorway roads in the EU in 2022 - accounting for around half of all road deaths.This figure is significantly higher in Ireland. Cynthia Ní Mhurchú has called for the EU's Connecting Europe Facility to be used to pay for remedial works on designated accident black spots on our rural roads.

According to Ní Mhurchú,

"Unless we take radical steps to improve our roads, whilst at the same time improving driver behaviour, nothing will improve"

The penalty for using your phone while driving is a fixed charge of €120, and 3 penalty points