Motorists who break the red lights at the Merrion Gates level crossing in south Dublin will be caught on camera and issued with fines and penalty points from noon on Friday.
The automatic enforcement cameras will take pictures of the licence plates of drivers who fail to stop when the flashing red lights are showing at the railway crossing in the Merrion/Sandymount area. Offenders will receive an €80 fine and two penalty points. Drivers who attempt to speed through the crossing will be fined €160 and given three penalty points.
Motorists drove into level crossing gates 23 times last year, Iarnród Éireann said. Cameras will be installed at six more level crossings in the coming months.
The Merrion Gates were chosen for the first cameras because of “persistent driver behaviour issues” where motorists attempt to beat the barrier by continuing past the stop line when the red lights are flashing.
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“Interface between road and rail users at level crossings represents one of the greatest safety risks on the railway,” Iarnród Éireann chief executive Mary Considine said.
“The installation of Garda GoSafe cameras, firstly here at Merrion Gates and at other level crossings across the country to encourage drivers to always act safely at level crossings”.
In Dublin Iarnród Éireann intends to deploy the cameras at a number of level crossings including Serpentine and Sandymount in south Dublin, and Sutton and Coolmine on the northside. Cameras will also be installed in Kerry and Roscommon this year.
The Merrion Gates initiative marks the first use in more than a decade of automatic cameras to catch motorists breaking red lights.
In 2015 cameras were installed for a six-month trial on traffic lights at the junction of Blackhall Place and the Luas Red line in Dublin’s north inner city following crashes where vehicles failing to stop at the red light was the main contributory factor.
The initiative was hugely successful, with the number of drivers breaking the light falling by half in the second three months of the trial, and no successful court appeals against fines. However, the trial was discontinued.
In early 2024 Transport Infrastructure Ireland was tasked with developing a national strategy for the introduction of camera-based enforcement. The strategy was submitted to the Department of Transport in mid-2025, but has not been published.
Speaking at the Merrion Gates on Wednesday, Assistant Garda Commissioner for roads policing, Catharina Gunne, said the use of red-light cameras was an important deterrent.
“We welcome this next stage of co-operation with our partners in transport safety. The effective use of this kind of technology will greatly help us to keep rail and road users safe through enforcement.”
The use of cameras across the city “is something that is in our strategy”, she said. Their widespread use would involve a “multi-agency approach”, but, she said, “it is achievable”.
Dublin City Council head of traffic Brendan O’Brien said the same infrastructure being used at the Merrion Gates could be deployed at junctions in the city.
“Now that this has been proved [at the Merrion Gates] it should be easier to get the rest of them in,” he said. “Red-light running is one thing we have to tackle, but the other is bus lane enforcement. Cameras will be needed for the BusConnects corridors or you will lose the benefit of having those corridors.”
