A call to cap new cars sold in Ireland to top speeds of 100 kph won’t make “any bloody difference” to road safety, Ciara Kelly has said.

Former Fine Gael minister Michael Ring has called for all cars imported into Ireland to be fitted with speed-limiters preventing them from going any faster than 100kph.

The outgoing Mayo TD also warned that the Government is taking the wrong approach when it comes to addressing road fatalities.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, presenter Ciara Kelly said she was happy to put herself “in the lion’s mouth” and label the plan “nanny statism”.

“I know that we are very deeply concerned about road deaths,” she said. “Road deaths are down, by the way, this year.

“Year on year, I think we're down by 10 road deaths this year.

“We had a very bad first quarter but I even thought during the first quarter, when we were reporting on it, that just because there is a bad week of road deaths, or even a bad month of road deaths, that doesn't necessarily mean that something has happened, or doesn't necessarily mean that something needs to change."

Safest in Europe

Ciara said these things are “often random events”, claiming that Irish media “never” reports that Irish road deaths are “among the safest in Europe”.

“The average road deaths in the EU across all the countries (per million people) is 46 - we are 31 - and we are only higher than really the Scandinavian countries,” Ciara said.

“I don't know that we can drive our road deaths down much lower, but you'll never hear that said.

“And I think this reminds me a little bit of COVID, that if there's any risk at all, we can't do anything. “

The presenter said the “reality of it” is that Ireland has “really good roads”.

"Other countries in Europe have speed limits of 160 kilometres an hour, but we are there thinking that we have to have 100kph even though we have about two thirds of the average road deaths of any other EU country.”

Shane Coleman in the Newstalk studio. Image: Newstalk

Fellow presenter Shane Coleman said he was “staggered” by Ciara’s argument.

“Why not be Scandinavia?” Shane asked.

“I don’t get what the problem is with reducing speed limits – I can't see any downside to it.”

Ciara said she thinks the downside is that the “whole country” drives at a “much lower speed limit than is necessary”.

“People still will die, because there will always be accidents,” she said.

“The truth of it is, speed is causing a lot of deaths because people are breaking the speed limit, it doesn't mean we have to lower the speed limit – that’s a different issue.

“People are dying because people are speeding and breaking the speed limit.

“Lowering the speed limit won't make any bloody difference.”

Worth doing

Shane disagreed, insisting that 100 kph is a “really fast speed”.

“If you're driving to Cork - and that's from Dublin to Cork, which is as long a distance as you're probably going – it adds 25 minutes to your journey.

“25 minutes is nothing.

“If you could save 10 lives or 20 lives from doing this, it would mean 10 or 20 families are spared that agony every year.

“God, I think it's worth doing.”

Listen back here:

Main image: Split image - Ciara Kelly on Newstalk Breakfast & cars speeding. Image 1: Bauer Media Image 2: Stock Photo