Last week was a stark reminder that road deaths are going in the wrong direction, as five people died in 48 hours in Meath, Kilkenny, and Cork.

The 113 dead as of Tuesday, July 30 is some 13 more than the first seven months of 2023.

In total last year, there were 184 lives lost, a jump of 19% (or 29 people) on 2022’s total.

Those 184 lives represented an average of 3.53 people being killed each week.

The 113 people killed so far this year means a weekly death rate of 3.64.

If the trend continues for the remainder of the year, we may see Ireland have more than 200 deaths on the roads.

This is completely contrary to the Government’s aim to achieve Vision Zero by 2050 under their Road Safety Strategy, agreed with the Road Safety Authority (RSA).

Under that plan, which would see Ireland have zero road deaths or serious injuries by 2050, we should have cut the number of deaths and serious injuries by half by 2030.

Since the publication of the report’s first stage in December of 2021, both figures have been going the opposite direction.

you break into the strategy even further, it seems that the Government is having difficulty implementing its own plans.

One target was to “eliminate the incidence of unaccompanied learner permit drivers.”

A quick browse of the Garda Traffic social media pages show that we are not even close to elimination, given the frequency of which they post about incidents.

There was the idea to “explore the potential of an online portal for road users to upload footage of road traffic offences which could assist in prosecution,” something which was aimed to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2022, but will now go into 2026 at the absolute earliest.

Another hope for the strategy would be that we would be able to provide “timely and appropriate road traffic collision data to local authorities, and agencies with responsibility for road improvement and maintenance, to inform their work.”

In fact, this was a practice that was previously in place until 2020 but then abruptly stopped amid GDPR concerns.

Instead of being proactive, the various stakeholders seem unable to address the problem. The man, woman, and dog on the street can tell you that GDPR could be adhered to when discussing road accidents, but the fact seems lost on those in charge.

One other target of note was to “identify potential enhancements to the National Car Test (NCT).”

What is the point of identifying potential enhancements when people are left waiting for months to get their NCT date anyway?

After all, the Government has hit some of its targets — new penalty points legislation is being enacted later this year (albeit a good nine months after it was first introduced to the Dáíl) to target offences like speeding and not wearing seatbelts.

Furthermore, increased sanctions for polydrug, drug and alcohol use while driving are in the pipeline, and mandatory drug testing at the scene of a collision.

However, there seems to be confusion as to what the overall attitude is towards the figures.

In May, the chief executive of the RSA Sam Waide says there had been an “improvement in road death statistics” in recent months, somewhat contradicting then Minister with Responsibility for Road Safety Jack Chambers, who correctly said that things were “definitely worse than last year.”

Mr Chambers achieved plenty during his 18-month period in the role, but his recent move to the Finance portfolio resulted in another worrying issue.

Both Mr Chambers and his predecessor in the role, Hildegarde Naughton, sat at Cabinet (but did not have a vote.)

The replacement for Mr Chambers, James Lawless, does not even have a seat at Cabinet.

In the space of five years, we have gone from winning EU awards for our road safety to being a European blackspot for it.

The Taoiseach and Tánaiste can say over and over again that the thoughts are with victims and their families — but actions speak a lot louder than words.

It is beyond past the time that road safety was given its own senior ministerial portfolio, by this Government or the next, after the election.

Otherwise, the devastating consequences for future road accident victims and those who love and care for them will go on, and on.