The Dublin Cycling Campaign is an independent, voluntary lobby group that has been working to improve the city for all cyclists for over a decade and a half.
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National Safety Council (NSC)
National Safety Council Campaign
The Dublin Cycling Campaign is currently involved in a campaign to try and get the National Safety Council (NSC) to take a more proactive approach to road safety. At present the NSC contains no cyclist, pedestrian or public transport user representative and only the motoring industry lobby groups are represented by specific appointees to the NSC board. This has lead to a very unbalanced and victim blaming approach being adopted by the NSC.
Our basic campaign strategy
- Get cycling views represented on the NSC
- Ensure that the focus moves from worthless PR motivated campaigns to the central message of enforcement in the areas of drink driving, speeding, mobile phone usage and illegal parking. To monitor this it is essential that on at least a yearly basis national survey of road compliance should be held covering all these areas to verify the effectiveness of Irish policing i.e. the level of non-compliance and the chances of getting caught.
Our latest action was a protest cycle on Friday 25th July 2004 calling for the scrapping of the NSC and its replacement with a new organisation that will represent the rights of all road users.
Written Correspondence to date:
- April 22 - The DCC sent a letter on to the NSC.
- April 28 - We received this reply from the NSC.
- May 14 - The DCC's sent a copy of their agenda for the next meeting with the NSC.
- May 18 - Letter in reponse to the meeting sent to the NSC.
- June 17 - A follow-up letter was then sent after recieving no reply to the previous one.
NSC members (until 14th April 2005)
- Mr. Edward Shaw - Chairman
- Mr. Dick O'Driscoll (Insurance Industry)
- Mr. Finbarr Crowley (NRA)
- Mr. Conor Faughnan (AA)
- Mr. Jim Humphreys (Dep. of the Environment & Local Government)
- Ms. Bernadette Kinsella (Clare County Development Board)
- Asst. Commissioner Mr. Richard Kelly (Garda National Traffic Bureau)
- Councillor Declan McDonnell (Galway City Council - PD)
- Councillor Mary Roche (Waterford City Council - FF)
- Ms.Grainne Harte
Road Safety Committee
Board member Dick O'Driscoll has been appointed Chairman of the Council's Road Safety Committee. Dick's experience stems from his position as Director of Underwriting and Distribution with the Hibernian Group - one of the country's major insurance companies.
Further expertise is being provided by Finbarr Crowley (NRA), Hilary Dalton (Dep. of the Environment & Local Government), Conor Faughnan (AA), Chief Supt. Denis Fitzpatrick (Garda National Traffic Bureau), and Cllr. Declan McDonnell (Galway City Council - PD).
The NSC anti-cycling policy
Proof of the NSC victim blaming approach can be seen from their own literature. Instead of fighting for safe roads for cyclists such as is the norm in Denmark and the Netherlands where the majority of children cycle to school instead the NSC prefers to blame the victims of their failure to ensure that safety comes first. Their Going to School Leaflet
states that "A bicycle is a vehicle not a toy and a cyclist runs a high risk. Think twice before allowing your child to cycle to school. No child under the age of twelve should be allowed to cycle in any sort of traffic."
The NSC and compliance with Freedom of Information
On March 19th, the DCC made a Freedom of Information request to Mr. Alan Richardson of the National Safety Council. We wanted to know how they came to make the above recommendation regarding children under the age of 12.
We asked them to provide us with the drafts of the above document, the name(s) of the author(s), the data which they used to make this recommendation and the names of the sponsors (if any) of this information.
However instead of receiving the requested information, we got a letter from Mr. Richardson stating the charges the NSC levy in relation to such requests and offering us the opportunity "to amend or clarify some aspects of your query".
They had four weeks to comply with the request but a couple of months later we still had not received the requested information. So on the 11th July, we made a second appeal for the relevant documentation by asking them to review their refusal. We should have our answer at the start of August as by law, they must review their refusal within 3 weeks of the appeal.
