Only 649 Traffic Gardaí: Ní Mhurchú Calls for Urgent Road Safety Crackdown as we celebrate bank holiday weekend

EU Transport MEP calls for a whole new approach to road safety as road deaths rise and figures show we have insufficient levels of Gardaí policing our roads

649 traffic Gardaí is not enough -according toEU Transport Committee Member Cynthia Ní Mhurchú. The MEP says that Ireland is at risk of falling behind EU road safety standards due to insufficient enforcement capacity and a lack of Gardaí in our road policing units across the country.

There were 1,046 Gardaí working in roads policing in 2009. Recent figures supplied to Ní Mhurchú, by Gardaí under freedom of information, show that in March 2026, that number has fallen to 649 Gardaí. That is despite a significant increase in the population in Ireland in the intervening years.

Although Garda traffic cop numbers have risen slightly over the past 2 years, Ní Mhurchú says that the spike in road deaths this year means 2026 could surpass recent road fatality levels unless urgent action is taken.

She highlighted that large rural regions are being policed by dangerously small traffic units including Kerry with only 21 Gardai and Donegal with 22 Gardai working specifically on roads policing. Sligo and Leitrim together have only 14 traffic cops policing roads there. (See table below)

Ní Mhurchú is calling for a package of urgent, practical measures to improve road safety, including a significant expansion of average speed and static speed cameras, alongside the introduction of new technology to automatically detect mobile phone use and seatbelt offences. She is also calling for tougher penalties, including doubling fines for mobile phone use while driving, increasing speeding fines, and raising penalty points from three to four. In addition, she believes repeat offenders should face mandatory re-education programmes, with a broader discussion needed on requiring repeat offenders to re-sit their driving test. Finally, Ní Mhurchú has called for progress in Programme for Government commitments to streamline enforcement by digitising court processes, improving real-time data sharing between agencies such as An Garda Síochána and the Courts Service, and reducing the need for Gardaí to attend court, ensuring more officers remain on active road policing duty.

As of April 2^nd, 2026, 42 people had been killed on our roads, 3 more than at the same time last year –  another abysmal year on our roads.

Ní Mhurchú has written to Minister Jim O’Callaghan to raise the issue and call for a fast-tracked dedicated road policing recruitment campaign to restore Garda roads policing numbers to at least 1,000 Gardaí by 2030.