Road safety across the island of Ireland was top of the agenda at a cross-border ministerial meeting held in the Manor House last Friday.

Environment Minister, Arlene Foster and Regional Development Minister, Conor Murphy, met with the Republic's Minister for Transport and Marine, Noel Dempsey. Among the areas up for discussion were major road projects in Northern Ireland, the restoration of border bridges on the Tyrone/Monaghan border, the Dublin-Belfast rail link, community based rural transport, and road safety.

While many of the topics up for discussion were on a broad scale, Minister Foster, a Fermanagh/South Tyrone MLA, took time to explain the significance of the meeting for people in Fermanagh.

In particular, she suggested that a cross-border drive to improve road safety would have impact on the lives of people living in border areas like Fermanagh.

Commending the work already being carried out by the PSNI and the Garda, Mrs Foster explained that while there had been a significant drop in the numbers of people killed in road accidents, the figure is still too high and still needed to be targeted.

RUBBER-STAMPED

The Minister also explained a change in legislation which she is hoping will be rubber-stamped at the start of next year: "At the minute, the way the law stands, a disqualified driver in Northern Ireland can still continue to drive across the Border and vice versa, and that is just not acceptable. "Early in 2008, myself, Minster Dempsey, and the Minister for Transport in London will be meeting to make the changes and put that issue to bed."

Turning to mutual penalty points, Mrs Foster explained the legislation here was slightly more complicated and would take a longer period of time to sort out, so she couldn't offer a definitive time-scale on when penalty points recognition would also be validated on both sides of the border.

While the meeting on Friday dealt specifically with North/South issues, Mrs Foster did take the opportunity to mention the need for cycle paths and the prospect of a Southern By-pass for Enniskillen, and she urged Minister Dempsey to think of these when passing through the town.

PRODUCTIVE

Concluding, Mrs Foster said it had been a productive meeting and added: "This was a good exchange of what are the issues from our point of view with regard road safety, and how we can get the message out to the people we aren't reaching with our advertising campaigns in order to make the roads a safer place."