Ireland has made progress with the building of motorways and dual carriageways, and has fixed the worst of the country’s single carriageways in the last few years.

But the long stretches of single carriageway roads on the network continue to be a major safety hazard and a serious challenge for the road authorities north & south.

That’s the result of the latest EuroRAP Ireland report 2008 – the European Road Assessment Programme report highlighting the current road infrastructure conditions across the entire island of Ireland, which was recently presented to Mr. Noel Dempsey TD, Minister for Transport.

The report shows that almost 95% of our deaths and serious injuries happen on single carriageway roads. In 2005 the EuroRAP report found 96km of the network in the Republic was classified as ‘Black – High Risk’.

All of those links have now been treated, and overall the 2008 report finds that there are no ‘High Risk’ sections on the network.

The analysis does identify 350 kms of ‘Red – Medium to High Risk’ sections (there were 463kms in 2005). The report lists ten ‘Medium-High Risk’ links (147 kms). All of these are single carriageways and all have now been targeted with action plans by the NRA.

Fred Barry, NRA CEO, said “While it is encouraging to note that the new road network does achieve a high star rating more work is required on the remaining National Primary and Secondary Network.”

Conor Faughnan, AA Ireland, said “The road authorities and AA Ireland have a very close working relationship, with the common goal of increasing road safety on the entire island of Ireland. It is critical to highlight this information and use it as a tracking mechanism for future progress. EuroRAP identifies problems clearly and commits us to fixing them.”

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