A SPEED CAMERA that is the subject of controversy and legal disputes detected more than 30,000 instances of speeding in its first year in operation in the south-east, an amount that is multiples of all other cameras in the country.

The controversy centres on a static camera at the N25 near Glenmore, Co Kilkenny. The national road is a busy route, linking the counties of Waterford, Kilkenny and Wexford.

There are claims that there is confusion arising from the structure of the road, due to a sudden speed limit transition from 100 kilometres per hour to 80 kilometres per hour when travelling from Wexford.

Critics have argued that this gives too little time to a driver to safely lower their speed in time before they come into range of the camera.

This stretch of the N25 has a reputation as a treacherous route locally, with Kilkenny County Council telling The Journal that gardaí had requested the camera be installed due reoccurring incidents over the past decade.

Over a longer period, the council collated figures showing it was the scene of more than 80 road deaths since the 1980s. While the placement of signage in the approach to the camera has resulted in complaints, many locals have no issue with the decision to place a camera somewhere on this section of roadway.

In response to the growing criticism over the signage, the council contacted Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) in recent months and new signage was installed about 400 metres further away from the old sign.

Labour Party TD for Wexford George Lawlor told The Journal that he has been contacted by “hundreds” of people in recent months from not just his own Wexford constituency, but also Waterford, Kilkenny and further afield.

“These are many people who have got penalty points for the first time in their lives, consider themselves to be very safe drivers and had an unblemished licence up to now,” Lawlor said.

Two people in particular got nine points within a matter of days, and 12 points is a disqualification so it’s serious for those people.

The camera was installed in May last year with signage installed by Kilkenny County Council.

In its first 12 months, 30,599 fines were handed out as a result of detections by the camera.

The closet to this is the speed camera on the N80 in Carlow, at 15,880 fines, but the number plummets after that. The N17 in Mayo had 11,467 fines and the N22 in Cork had 3,369. A number of other cameras had fewer than 1,100 fines in the 12-month period.

Lawlor, who received the information from the department of justice through a Dáil parliamentary question, has argued that the figures demonstrate that the N25 is “out of sync” with Ireland’s other speed cameras.

He has demanded that all fines and penalty points for anyone doing less than 100 kilometres per hour on the road to be rescinded.

Lawlor told The Journal that the camera was “welcome and necessary” but that the signage has been “abysmal” for motorists.

“I’d be in favour of making the whole road 80kmp/h. People have wanted the road to be made safer, but the issue is that the signage is completely inadequate,” he said.

Lawlor said a legal firm has begun working with a number of motorists who received penalty points with the aim of lodging judicial reviews to have the punishments overturned.

Council response

When contacted about concerns over the camera, Kilkenny County Council rejected that there had been “any dispute” over the speed camera and road, as it cited its own figures for speed detections at the site.

It said the camera was erected “at the request of An Garda Siochana due to the number of road traffic accidents occurring on this stretch of road” over the last decade. TII was responsible for installing the camera.

However, it accepted that there had been “complaints received” about the situation, leading it to request that TII “review the signage in the area approaching the speed camera” on the N25.

“At the end of May changes were made to road signage in the vicinity by TII,” the council said.

The council said it had monitored the number of detections to establish “whether detections were abnormally high”, adding that over a nine-month period just “145 to 217″ of vehicles were detected as exceeding the speed limit at this camera.

The number amounted to approximately 1-1.5% of drivers on that section of the N25 on the day it was monitored.

“This indicated that the majority of drivers were aware of the speed limit requirement,” the council argued.

Transport Infrastructure Ireland was contacted for comment.