A warning from Transport Infrastructure Ireland over improvements that it believes are needed on Irish roads is "timely and one the policy makers should reflect on", a Government minister has said.
Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure Patrick O'Donovan was responding to the advice reported in the Irish Independent.
It said that Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan was warned by TII last year that failure to properly invest in new road projects and improvements could result in 77 deaths and 381 serious injuries over the next five years.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, Mr O'Donovan said the Government has invested significantly in roads in recent years, but he called for further investment in rural roads.
"I think it's very important, I think it's timely and I think the policymakers should reflect on it," he said.
"Unfortunately on every provincial radio station or Morning Ireland when you turn it on, you're listening to a road fatality of some description all over the country, practically daily.
"These accidents more than likely are not happening on dual carriageways or on motorways."
"They're happening on single carriageways, minor roads, local roads and regional roads," Mr O'Donovan said.
"So we need improvements in our roads in rural areas in order to sustain rural communities that's self evident.
"You can always have expensive public transport projects going ahead in parallel.
"The bulk of it will be going into urban areas but in terms of rural areas, we need the volume of money and more, to make sure that not only are our roads safe, but we have commutable distances that are manageable."
Meanwhile, Green Party Senator Pippa Hackett, Minister of State for Land Use in the Department of Agriculture, defended progress made by Minister Ryan when it comes to road safety and investment in road infrastructure.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, Ms Hackett said the Government has spent €5 billion over the past three years on funding new roads and on the protection and renewal of existing roads.
"We can see the absolute necessity, we've had a pretty tragic year of road fatalities, but that is core to the decisions that are made in relation to roads," she said.
"Just last week, Minister Ryan supported a half a billion euro allocation in the west of Ireland, that's continued investment in our roads."
She rejected any claims that the pace of investment has slowed down.
"When you look at the National Development Plan, there's €100 billion worth of transport projects listed there," she said.
"We only have 35 billion to spend, decisions have to be made, priorities need to be made.
"Particularly given the year we've had we're looking at reducing speed limits on roads and road safety has to be paramount. That has been the case and will continue to be the case."
Speaking at a European Political Community summit in Granada, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said there had been huge investment in infrastructure in recent years;
"Hundreds of millions of euro go into maintenance and restoration of our local, regional and national roads every year, in addition to that, we sign off on new projects. Only this month, nearly half a billion euros is being invested in roads upgrades in the northwest for the N5, it's always the case that any government agency will always say they need more money. And if we don't give them more money, there'll be negative consequences."
Mr Varadkar said that he continues to support more funding for roads.
"I should be clear on that, but also we need to make sure that adequate funding for public transport, some really big important public transport, is about to come through planning, like Bus Connects in Dublin, like Cork Metropolitan rail and we have a commitment in the program for government to make sure that funding for public transport outweighs investment in roads by 2:1, and that makes sense to me as well."
