Greater use of red-light cameras on Dublin roads inches closer

The National Transport Authority (NTA) on Monday put out a tender for a newly created position – a "Camera Enforcement Subject Matter Expert".

That'll be someone to help the NTA bring in more cameras to punish drivers for breaking the rules of the road.

Whoever gets the job should have experience and expertise in "CCTV traffic monitoring", and enforcement of red lights, speed limits, bus lanes, yellow boxes, and parking rules, tender documents say.

The problems of drivers breaking red lights, and other rules of the road, is widespread in the city, and gardaí can’t be everywhere to catch them.

Even if they wanted to, which an April 2025 independent review of roads policing suggested not all gardaí do. 

“Some Gardaí working in Roads Policing – a minority, but nonetheless a noticeable one – are unproductive and appear to be demotivated and unconcerned with doing an effective, professional job,” the report found.

So, for some, the great hope for tackling the situation has been the installation of cameras to automatically read drivers’ licence plates and send them fines and penalty points.

Like Gordon Cummins of the Harold's Cross Educate Together National School parent-staff association.

“We talk about this a lot in the school, there's so many people now doing really dodgy stuff at lights all the time,” he said on Wednesday. “It is just becoming so prevalent that, unless we start policing it some way stricter, it's just never going to go away.”

The publication of the tender this week, is just the latest step on what's been a long, long road towards the possible eventual introduction of more enforcement cameras.

Concerns

So far this year, 88 people have died on Ireland's roads, show Garda statistics. That's up from 81 in the same period in 2025.

Red-light cameras can prevent fatal collisions, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), in the US.

"An IIHS study found that cameras reduced the fatal red light running crash rate of large cities by 21% and the rate of all types of fatal crashes at signalized intersections by 14%," it says.

There is a clear legitimate aim with these measures, says Olga Cronin, senior policy officer in surveillance and human rights with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) – to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries on Irish roads.

“It appears there are also other planned actions such as, for example, identifying high-risk locations based on collision data; investing in new, or upgraded, infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists; upgrading junctions or crossings; and enhancing the ‘learning to drive’ programme based on evidence from international best practice,” she says. “This is welcome.”

Camera-based enforcement to improve road safety can play a role, she says.

But people should be aware of the limitations and error rates of AI, technology, and these detection measures, and how things can go terribly wrong, she says.

There are also dangers and risks that can arise from any disproportionate and unnecessary surveillance in public spaces, she says.

Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) can lead to the collection of massive amounts of data concerning the movements of people at speed and at scale, she says.

“We need to be alive to the concern that this kind of data collection, and even the very setting up of the infrastructure to collect this data, could be misused or abused,” she says.

Cronin points to significant backlash in the US against the use of Flock ANPR cameras.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has documented how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) there has used Flock to go after immigrants without warrants.

Also, police in Kansas used it to pursue a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the police department; a Colorado police officer wrongfully accused a woman of theft based on a Flock hit and then refused to look at evidence proving her innocence; and a mother and her children were held at gunpoint because an ANPR camera wrongly flagged their car as stolen.

There have also been reports of police using ANPR to stalk their romantic interests, Cronin says.

“We’re not immune to such misuse or abuse,” she says. “This is why we need robust oversight, transparency, data access controls, audits, limitations on data collection and compliance with our data protection laws.”

For Cummins, of the Harold's Cross Educate Together National School parent staff association, he agrees that it's important to use the technology in a way that respects people’s rights.

But he says, there is a grim reality on our roads that needs to be confronted in terms of driver behaviour.

“Yes, we have GDPR. Yes, we have privacy concerns, but we also have this problem that is endemic around the country,” he says.

If the technology can be used ethically, in a controlled manner, that also helps to make the roads and junctions around schools safer for everyone, he says, then he and his parent staff association comrades would fully get behind it.

The contract

The contract for the new Camera Enforcement Subject Matter Expert will be for four years with a maximum contract value of about €1.5 million, the tender says.

The new role will support the NTA in delivery of Action 6 of the Phase 2 Action Plan 2025-2027, of Ireland’s Government Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030, it says.

This Action 6 calls to “expand the efficiency and capability of camera-based enforcement to improve road safety by changing driver behaviour”.

This means implementing the National Safety Camera Strategy, which looks to enhance “the enforcement of speed management measures on Irish roads, and to further develop camera-based enforcement at junctions, bus lanes and cycle lanes”.

Also, to consider the “use of camera-based enforcement to automatically detect mobile phone use and non-wearing of seat belts”.

And to “expand in a sustainable manner the use of cameras for traffic management improvements and enforcement of other offences where road safety is likely to also benefit”.

The tender documents say the Camera Enforcement SME would participate in "the drafting of legislation to support the introduction of camera-based enforcement systems".

They would also help identify "infrastructure requirements, such as communications systems, power supplies etc.", and "priority areas for the use of camera-based enforcement technology".

And then develop "a rollout strategy", as well as developing and implementing "procurement strategies", and particpating in "the tender evaluation and award process for competitively tendered contracts".

So, this is a tender for a person to, among other things, help write tenders to hire companies to roll out more camera enforcement.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.