Changes To Speed Limits To Go Ahead According To Tipperary County Council

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Tipperary County Council says it has no choice but to go ahead with implementing changes to speed limits. Legislation passed last year by the Dáil reduces a number of existing speed limits and was to come into effect for rural roads last November. The change was deferred until February 7th this year to allow time for signage to be changed.  The planned changes include speed limits being lowered from 100 km/h to 80 km/h on national secondary roads and from 80km/h to 60km/h on rural roads. Within towns, cities and built up areas, the limit will be 30km/h, while roads on the outskirts or arterial routes around urban areas will have a limit of 50km/h.  The 120 km/h speed limit on motorways and 100 km/h on national roads will remain as they are under the Road Traffic Act 2024.

Cllr Niall Dennehy, Clonmel, had submitted a motion late last year calling for a common sense application of the changes and that the new default limits not be universally applied in Tipperary  – this led to a request for legal advice which was presented to Councillors yesterday. The advice states that “While the byelaws do allow for local adjustments to speed limits under the criteria detailed by relevant authorities, these changes if considered as a wholesale set aside of the principle of the legislation would open the Bye Laws to legal challenge.”

The first change is to see all local rural roads have the speed limit lowered to 60km/hour.  Council staff are in the process of changing the signage but say the recent bad weather has delayed the work. The second phase of the work may be deferred past the original NTA deadline of June/July this year. The Council Executive is to bring forward a draft set of new bye laws for the Councillors to consider that would allow them to identify certain roads to retain the existing speed limits.