The same, however, does not hold for road safety. Since the start of the year, 52 people have died on the country's roads . . . the worst opening six weeks to a year in over a decade.

That level of carnage is utterly unacceptable, as is the fact that Ireland is one of the few EU countries where road deaths are increasing.

Clearly, the importance of personal responsibility cannot be overlooked.

Every single driver on the roads needs to be conscious that the car they are driving, if not managed with care, has the potential to wreck lives.

But, human nature being what it is, we cannot rely on all people to drive responsibly. We know beyond doubt that enforcement also has a major role to play in reducing the often completely avoidable deaths that are occurring daily on the country's roads.

And it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the government has failed completely in its duty to ensure that the traffic law is being enforced.

Leading experts can't really spell it out any more bluntly.

They say that lives are being lost needlessly on our roads because the government has failed to implement its own Road Safety Strategy. That is unforgivable and needs to be addressed immediately.

On page 11 of today's newspaper, road-safety experts have outlined 10 basic suggestions for reducing the number of deaths on the country's roads. Some of them are so obvious and so easy to introduce . . . for example, the mandatory introduction of convex mirrors on trucks to eliminate driver blind spots . . . that it beggars belief that they haven't been introduced already.

Others are more complex, but that cannot be an excuse for inaction.

There is clearly no one answer to reducing road deaths but, as a basic starting point, people considering drink-driving or breaking the speed limit must know that there is a reasonable chance they will be caught and punished. That is patently not the case at the moment. Latest statistics for roadside breath tests show that just one test, per county, per day, is being carried out, while there are currently just three working speed cameras in the entire country.

We can be, and are, critical of the government's record in this area during its nine years in power. But the emphasis now must be on ensuring that it learns from its mistakes and delivers real improvements in road safety. That means no more prevaricating over legal advice; no more delays in getting gardai on the streets at weekends and between 9pm and 3am and no more kowtowing to vested interests.

There are 15 months until the next general election and during that time, cutting road deaths must be the government's clear number one priority.

Failure to do so would be a dereliction of its duty to the people of Ireland.