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MORE THAN 2,244 drivers were caught speeding on Irish roads in the past week, with one motorist in Wexford detected driving 100km/h over the speed limit.
The significant amount of speed offences come as gardaí have ramped up road safety enforcement operations in the period leading up to Christmas, when road users are at a heightened risk of being involved in a fatal or serious collision.
Three people have died on Irish roads over the last 7 days, while there have been 13 collisions that led to serious and life-threatening injuries for others.
Gardaí are conducting a dedicated road traffic enforcement operation over the Christmas period, which will continue until January 6th, 2025.
Over the past week, gardaí carried out over 1,940 checkpoints, both statutory Mandatory Intoxicant Testing (MIT) and regular, high-visibility policing checkpoints.
During the operation this week, one driver was clocked at 184km/h in a 80km/h zone on the R731 at Monamolin in Rathnure, Co Wexford.
Another motorist was detected travelling at 121km/h at a 50km/h zone in Ardcroney, Co Tipperary.
Over the past week, 178 people were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
In the past seven days, we’ve carried out just over 1,940 checkpoints nationwide as part of our Christmas and New Year road safety operation, and arrested 178 people for driving while under the influence.#SaferRoads pic.twitter.com/Ho8k8CZZPJ
— An Garda Síochána (@GardaTraffic) December 14, 2024
Gardaí said that around 504 vehicles have been seized for a range of offences, and 329 Fixed Charge Notices were issued to drivers for using a mobile phone.
To date, 167 people have lost their lives in road traffic collisions on Irish roads in 2024.
Gardaí have appealed to all those set to take to the roads over the Christmas period to slow down, take extra care and to give your driving your full attention.
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I remember waking up to 3ft of water in my living room in Mallow during the 60’s. Cork towns have been battling flooding for as long as anyone can remember, blaming destroyed businesses and homes on climate change is a very ease excuse from the government, the reason Middleton got f**cked was because some genius decide to build a greenway instead of building flood defences. It’s inevitable that Cork City will get destroyed one day due to the lack of proper flood defences, which the building off are being held up by the campaign “Love the lee”. This campaign preventing flood defence in cork is back by the Green Party
@Tom Barry: Is that the greenway that Cork County Council put down recently on the old Youghal to Midleton railway line that you are referring to?
@Douglaslad: I’m referring to interviews of local homeowners and business owners who in the aftermath of the flooding criticised the fact that public funds where allocated to building a greenway prior to the building of sufficient flood defences.
@Tom Barry: this year has been one of the worst I can remember for what I would call erratic weather , in a negative sense. Feels like we haven’t had a dry week since the middle of June. What rain fell here in kilkenny st Stephens night was nuts , saw floods in fields Wednesday morning that ive never seen wayer in before. Ive seen more reports of tornados this year than ive seen in the last 30 years. Theres just no break from the bad weather this last 6 months.
@Tom Barry: There are 3 rivers (2 overground and 1 underground) converging in Midleton. All 3 burst their banks at almost the same time. That’s why Midleton flooded so quickly with almost no warning. As regards Cork, look where the city is. Stand on Patrick’s Hill and look over towards St Fin Barre’s. That small gap has to take the entire catchment of the Lee. That’s why Cork floods.
@Tom Barry: the thinking now is that flood defences are massively expensive but also counter productive. Many of them only serve to push the flooding downstream to a different part of the river where the communities there flood and they start looking for flood defences. What does help is not having corrupt planning officials who will rezone a flood plain for housing, not draining existing swamps to turn them into farmland, revitalising bogs, not cutting down tree cover, not allowing over grazing, not allowing folks to pave over their driveway etc.
@Tom Barry: a river near me burst It’s Banks in 1998 after 80mm of rain in less than 24hrs.this year winter it started to over flow after 60mm of rain. I think the 2000 acres of land built on up river is causing the river to flood with less rainfall. Only a hydrologist would be qualified to confirm my theory.
Jobs for the boys. Hey lads it’s pouring out….ring RTE and panic everybody.
@Gerry Hannan: I think it would be better if we do nothing. It’s been working fine for us so far.
The rise of the quango’s again! It’s nearly one a month now at this rate.
Stop building on flood plains and cutting down trees. I have seen so many areas locally that are prone to holding water. Yet the landowners have cut down trees and removed hedging.
@Pat Corr: They couldn’t do it if they hadn’t been granted planning permission. Our government should underwrite and rehouse everyone trapped by flooding – that would stop these exploitative practices.
@F Fitzgerald: I have to say I agree but just as with the mica and pyrite and the defective apartments the Government underwriting means the taxpayer is again on the hook for the failure to properly control and regulate planning.
@Harry Whelks: We are the people who voted them into power year in year out, knowing what was going on and still reelected them. When the public voted last time the sworn civil war enemies coalesced together and with the greens to keep sf out and we still live with their policies. So the taxpayer should rightly be on the hook for endorsing our governments actions. Its a po-xy situation we’ve gotten ourselves into, so maybe we will like our government constantly says when found out that the lessons have been learned and changes will be made
That’s a meteorologists wet dream
They’d want to hire some proper forecasters first, and invest heavily in some proper equipment… We need something a bit more professional than Theresa Minion…..
@Steve Davis: Exactly. Are they installing water level stations etc around the country or is it just a group of wannabees sitting in a room winging it?
@David Corrigan: there are water level stations already installed around the country, have been for years!! You can use waterlevel.ie to check them yourself. It’s hilarious when ignorant people get annoyed solely because of their ignorance.
@NotMyIreland: Thanks for that. Why didn’t they use that data to warn the people of Cork recently then? Somebody must have been monitoring things, right?
@NotMyIreland: I guess the Disclaimer answers that.
Disclaimer
Data is provisional, unchecked, and has not been validated to remove invalid or improbable values.
Data may be inaccurate due to instrument errors, malfunctions or physical changes at the measurement site.
Data may be delayed due to telemetry issues or system malfunctions.
Data is provided on a best efforts basis – the OPW will endeavour to maintain data availability, but does not guarantee continuity of services. Recording of data at some stations may cease. Data for such stations will be preserved as part of the OPW Hydrometric archive.
It is the responsibility of the user to ensure that the data, if used, are accurate and fit for purpose.
The Commissioners of Public Works will not be responsible for any loss or damage howsoever arising from the use or interpretation of the data, and reserve the right to reprocess the data as they deem necessary.
@David Corrigan: I’m all seriousness I’d say the data available at waterlevel.ie and from these stations will be used in conjunction with previous weather station results to inform the modelling system they propose to use. Monitoring the water levels alone wouldn’t give enough time for some of the more recent types of floods. Understanding how much rain, has exactly what effect on the river, when it falls in place x or place y will lead to more precise warnings. Seems the system has been in development a few years at this stage.
@NotMyIreland: It could be automated with the cheap and power IoT platforms that are now available. I work in that area and it can easily be put together.
It’s a shame the data was always there and still people lost their businesses etc over nobody using the data. Probably millions spent on the monitors and no return so far.
@Steve Davis: I presume you’re referring to Teresa Mannion – she’s a reporter and works for RTE, nothing to do with Met Eireann and weather forecasting. As an aside, why do you consider her to be unprofessional?
There isn’t one meteorologist in Ireland who comprehends what is behind long-term weather (the seasons). For a short while, they managed to convince society that long-term weather is climate so they could force through computer-generated dire conclusions, which were picked up by a subculture in a belief that humanity can control the weather. Climate then became an issue of human behaviour and a political vehicle, and the relationship between the motions of the Earth as the primary driver of climate remains ignored.
LOL
@Tom Barry: more uninformed comments from you, but that’s to be expected I guess.
To say that the Middleton flooding was due to the greenway in any shape or form is absolutely wrong. It is possibly more to do with the huge concrete area the distillery placed in an important natural drainage area.
That aside, flood defences are massively complicated and not always an easy answer. The amount of rain is the amount of rain and, when it falls it has to go somewhere – that’s basic physics. If you place defences in one place, it simply pushes the problem to somewhere else and, as other have said, if building on the floodplains has been going on for decades then you quickly find you have a problem that is impossible to fix.
Hedgerows, wooded areas etc used to slow the pace of rainfall reaching the river system, that has been drastically reduced over decades so we now see that water reaching the rivers far quicker which in turn causes more flash flooding.
Also, you don’t have to go digging too deep to see how many other countries around the world are facing unusually common adverse weather events – like it or not it’s a global problem that isn’t going to be remedied by diverting funds away from a greenway.
@Wombleman: he didn’t say that building a greenway caused the flooding, he said they spent money on a greenway and not on flood defences.
@Wombleman: You’re misreading his comment. He said he was one of many who wanted to see flood defence schemes funded before any other developments in the area.
I didn’t read it that they are opposed to any greenway, more that they’d like it to be a long-term project.
Sure we have the opposite example of residents in other areas objecting to seawalls to keep flooding at bay because they want a view!
Probably will be under water before it opens
A team of half a dozen people can predict world weather using software and accurately. International/national/local that same data is made available to application software and for your phone/desktop. Why on earth do we need Met Éireann at all, technology surpassed it long ago.
@Osprey: Give the typical Journal poster a synoptic weather chart and they would be lost.
About time to take it out of the hands of the ESB Somehow I can’t see that happening
@Kevin Hannan: Since when did the ESB do the weather forecast?
@Steve Davis: hilarious given your Teresa Mannion comment above
A lack of proper planning allowing flood plains to be built on, no foresight on the consequences of these decisions and no lessons learned as usual. Millions spent designing flood defences but rarely implemented in many cases. We are seeing our chickens come home to roost and in most cases there is nothing that can be done as man is unable to substantially alter the impacts of weather phenomena. The idea we can control the climate or weather is firmly in the realms of science fiction
In fairness, the Netherlands have successfully managed to alleviate flooding. Also, New York was built on several rivers. Their subway, for example, is kept dry by constantly running electric pumps.
It’s a quirk of marine transport history that most of the world’s cities were founded on coastal ports. Unless we go the route of Indonesia and relocate our main cities outright, we’ll have to invest in diverting the water to flow around them safely. Agree with you that once sea water swamps the drains and aquifers, it’ll be too late to relocate and there won’t be the infrastructure in place to house anyone.
@Spanner: Here’s what is happening in Jakarta, with 10 million people.
Well if it helps go for it.
What I am missing is an all-round approach, what about areas that are hilly but grazing lands? Thinking potentially landslides, does anyone know of plans how to address ?
have your say