A long-awaited legal fix to give council officials direct access to collision data is expected to progressed in the first half of the year, the Minister of State covering road safety has said.The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has not shared crash location data with local councils directly for a decade. GDPR was used as the reason why the RSA stopped sharing the information.As previously covered, GDPR came into force across the European Union in May 2018, but the RSA appears to have only begun working on the issue with the Data Protection Commissioner in 2022 years later, the problem has not been fully resolved. The Department last year promissed the legal changes which are now planned to happen in the coming months. The confirmation comes from junior transport Minister Sen Canney in reply to a parliamentary question from Social Democrats TD Jen Cummins.Deputy Cummins asked: If Dublin City Council and the other Dublin local authorities currently have access to collision location data from 2019 onwards; the reason the Road Safety Authority ceased sharing this data with local authorities in 2020, given that the Data Protection Commission stated in April 2024 that GDPR should not prevent the proportionate publication of anonymised crash-location details; to explain the way in which local authority road engineers are expected to identify and redesign dangerous junctions for cyclists and pedestrians without access to this data; and to provide a specific date by which the National Vehicle and Driver File Bill 2025 will be enacted to restore this access.In a written reply, Minister Canney said: Collision data are collected by members of An Garda Sochna at the scene of road traffic accidents. These data were previously shared with local authorities, via the Road Safety Authority, to enable them to identify locations of interest (accident blackspots) that would benefit from safety improvements. Due to the presence of personal information in the data, legal advice related to GDPR has meant that local authorities stopped receipt of collision data since November 2023.As well as sharing of the data, the local authorities have identified an issue with the legal basis to process the data, once received. The National Vehicle and Driver File Bill 2025 will, once enacted, provide a legal basis for local authorities to receive and process the collision data, he said.He said that, as an interim measure, the Department of Transport has been undertaking detailed collision analysis on the regional and local road network to identify locations of interest.As part of this process, when locations of interest are identified, the Department notifies the affected local authority, and, in turn, the councils can apply for funding of low-cost safety schemes for these locations.He added: The General Scheme of the National Vehicle and Driver File Bill 2025 has been approved by Government and is with the Office of Parliamentary Counsel for drafting. The passage of this Bill is a Programme for Government commitment and will amend the Roads Act 1993 to provide a basis for the resumption of direct sharing of road traffic collision data with local authorities. The Bill will be published in the coming weeks with enactment targeted for the first half of 2026.