A DOCTOR WHO was knocked down by a driver while cycling will tell the Oireachtas transport committee Ireland’s “dysfunctional” system of road safety oversight led to his accident.

Seán Owens, a GP, was travelling to a house call in January 2025 when he was struck from behind by a car in a hit-and-run outside Castlebellingham, Co Louth. He suffered an injury to the part of the brain responsible for speech and balance and lost his right ear.

He spent most of 2025 undergoing intensive medical treatment and rehabilitation in Beaumont, Drogheda, Dundalk and Dún Laoghaire, spending nine months in hospital in total.

Owens will tell TDs this morning that he missed a year of his two sons’ childhood – bedtimes, adventures and games.

“This is the true cost of our dangerous road culture that we have tacitly allowed to exist,” Owens will tell the committee.

He has not been declared fit to work and had to resign from his practice in November 2025. He can no longer drive, cycle or run. He will tell TDs that his sense of identity and of his place in the world has been affected. He feels lucky to be alive and to have his family around him, but misses his old life.

Owens will tell the committee that it is “not safe to cycle in Ireland in 2026″, primarily due to the lack of safe cycling infrastructure. 

Owens is chair of Climate and Health Alliance, a coalition of public health organisations highlighting the public health impact of climate change and the health benefits of climate action.

Climate and Health Alliance is pushing for a rapid shift to active travel such as walking and cycling in Ireland, which Owens will say has one of the world’s most sedentary populations.

Caoimhe Clarke, consultant psychiatrist at St Vincent’s University Hospital, will speak alongside Owens on behalf of the Climate and Health Alliance.

Clarke will tell the committee that a lack of sufficient physical activity is to blame for most of the chronic conditions currently overwhelming Ireland’s hospital system, including diabetes, asthma and cardiovascular disease.

Levels of physical activity are shaped by the built environment and by infrastructure, which in Ireland is designed for cars.

“Most people in Ireland cannot achieve the recommended daily amount of physical activity as roads and streets are too dangerous and hostile for walking, cycling, wheeling and play,” Clarke will tell the committee.

Last year, 190 people were killed on Irish roads, with 10 times more than that seriously injured and requiring hospitalisation, Clarke will say.

She will criticise poor collection of data on life-changing injuries, which means Ireland’s unsafe roads are not being seen as a public health issue.

One in five spinal cord injuries in 2023 were caused directly by transport incidents. The number of people who have lost their lives cycling has doubled since 2021, Clarke will say.

“We all pay for our dangerous roads…via lost loved ones and lost opportunities for health,” Clarke will tell TDs.

Fine Gael TD Michael Murphy, who chairs the Oireachtas transport committee, said ahead of this morning’s meeting that the joint committee aims to make specific, targeted recommendations on road safety actions to the government and relevant state agencies. 

Climate and Health Alliance’s members include Children’s Health Ireland, the Irish Medical Organisation, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association and the Royal College of Physicians, as well as a number of health and environmental advocacy groups and academic organisations.

With reporting by Christina Finn