The Green Party has accused the Government of failure on key road safety principles as the Minister for Transport and his EU counterparts signed a charter aimed at cutting road deaths in the union by half within six years.
Mr Eamon Ryan, the Green Party's transport spokesman, said Mr Brennan would "make much" of the signing of the European Road Safety Charter in Dublin today, but the "reality on the ground" was that the Government had been "woefully inadequate", particularly in protecting the most vulnerable road users.
He said the Government was "clearly failing" on every one of 12 principles for an urban road safety strategy set out by the European Cities and Regions for Road Safety (SAFE) body a year ago. The principles are included as a special annexe to the road safety charter.
"If we are going to achieve the objectives of the Charter then we are going to have to radically change our transport strategy to ensure that road safety is a top priority rather than an afterthought. This means putting the needs of pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users first rather than designing our transport system around the private car," Mr Ryan said.
Listing what he said were the Government's failures in the key areas, Mr Ryan cited the abandonment of the Government's promise to set up a dedicated traffic corps among failures in the road safety strategy.
"The Garda Traffic Corps has been abandoned, the Garda computer cannot connect to the Courts computer, we have empty speed camera boxes, random breath tests still not possible and the National Roads Safety Council is critical of the lack of funding of traffic enforcement," he said.
Mr Ryan also listed the failure to sanction "the open use of 30km speed limits", which he said were common in other European countries, and was critical of design measures for roads and for cycling and pedestrian facilities.
He said the programme to improve conditions for cyclists had "ground to a halt in Dublin and elsewhere" and that the Government was "refusing" to abide by its public commitment to start making all taxis wheelchair accessible.
In addition, Mr Ryan said there was an almost a complete lack of road safety education in schools.