Former international rower and double Olympic gold medalist, James Cracknell suffered a brain injury during a cycling accident in the US. He was wearing a helmet, which he believes saved his life. However, he developed epilepsy and personality changes such as a short temper as a result of his brain injuries . He now campaigns to encourage people to wear helmets.
The Government has said while cyclists should wear helmets for safety reasons, it will not bring in new laws to make them compulsory.
Junior minister for transport Alan Kelly TD said while accidents would increase as cycling continued to get more popular, he believed the authorities needed to work to minimise the number of collisions rather than introduce laws making helmets compulsory.
"There are many different opinions on this around the world,” he said.
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“Really people should wear helmets but making it obligatory is probably something that has been looked at many times and people have come down on the side of not doing so for many different reasons.
"But really people should be wearing helmets particularly if they are doing long-distance journeys or journeys where there is high density of traffic."
"The volume of people cycling has gone through the roof, it's increasing everywhere across Ireland, so because of that we are seeing a proportionality of more accidents but we have to limit those.
"There is no plan to bring in mandatory use of helmets but I think it is something that everyone should consider very, very strongly," he said.
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In only two countries in the world, Australia and New Zealand, have such laws been introduced and fully enforced.
In South Africa helmets are compulsory but there is no penalty for non compliance. And in some territories or states in other nations varying measures have been introduced, such as making helmets mandatory in urban areas or for children under 16 years.
Kelly made his comments in Cork where he was launching the bike scheme to be rolled out in the city and in Limerick and Galway later this year.
Just this week in Cork a cyclist was killed after falling from his bike on a city street and hitting his head after colliding with a bollard. It is not clear of a helmet would have saved his life.
His death was the seventh cyclist fatality on the roads of the Republic since the start of the year, compared to five deaths in all of last year.
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