“When Kerry played Dublin recently in the All Ireland Football Semi Final in Croke Park, returning Kerry supporters ran a gauntlet of six speed vans between Duagh and the Six Crosses. These were purposely deployed at the time that the Kerry fans were entering the county coming home from the match,” said a fuming Michael Healy Rae, TD this morning.
“Further down in South Kerry, four more speed vans were deployed just at the time to try and catch Kerry supporters coming home again from the match on that Sunday night.
Target Farranfore Village
This in my opinion is disgraceful, I am all for road safety, but deploying extra resources to catch Kerry supporters coming home from a match is a disgrace.
“On Monday, September 19th in Farranfore Village where speed vans are never deployed, a van was secretly parked in a very discrete location within the village limit trying to catch motorists who may be doing one or two kilometers more than the required speed limit.
Penalty Points Bestowed
When the whole idea of speed vans was envisaged it was to save lives and to be open and transparent in identifying where the vans were and creating an awareness amongst motorists to slow down and keep within speed limits.
Now it is a money making exercise and a method of doing everything they can to increase the amount of penalty points bestowed upon road users and in many cases be the cause of people losing their licenses.
Fish in a Barrel
I have been in contact with the Chief Superintendent about the behaviour in some of the places that I have outlined and also in other areas like Fossa just outside of Killarney where it is like shooting fish in a barrel the way they are catching people for being a couple of kilometers over the speed limit.
Motorists are being unfairly targeted with penalty points and fines. In my opinion, these are respectable, law abiding people who just might happen to be doing a couple of very small kilometers over the speed limit and are now paying a very heavy penalty for it,” said Deputy Healy Rae.
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