Minister's response on road safety "nowhere near good enough" - Parsley

9.58.31am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 21st May 2007

Alliance Youth Affairs Spokesperson Ian James Parsley

Alliance Youth Affairs Spokesperson Ian James Parsley has condemned the Executive's response to last weekend's road deaths as "wholly inadequate".

The North Down Councillor stated: "The Executive's response on an issue which has cost 1,000 lives this decade alone is nowhere near good enough. It is not reviews we need, it is action.

"Are we seriously being told that the parties stood in an election seeking places in our government with no idea whatsoever what to do about road safety? Are we being told that the public paid for special advisers for the four Executive parties during suspension and, for all that money, they produced not a single proposal on road safety? If the Ministers cannot come forward with proposals on serious issues like this immediately, they have no right to the ministerial car.

"As the Executive apparently has no idea how to deal with this issue, people will be asking if it can be trusted to tackle hospital waiting lists, housing crises and rising suicide levels? Or will it just 'call for a review' on those issues too?

"The Alliance Party stood at the last election with a clearly stated public platform on road safety, focusing on better enforcement, better education and better structures. Resources should be reallocated from policing main roads to policing rural single carriageways; from expensive public advertising to direct driver education; from constructing single-carriageway death traps to ensuring all our major routes are built to dual-carriageway standard with central barriers throughout.

"It is wholly inadequate for Ministers to shirk responsibility and pass it on to civil servants. Ministers and their advisers are being paid big money by the public they serve. That public wanted local ministers for local issues, and those ministers had better start coming up with local solutions to save local lives."

ENDS