May they rest in peace.
Gardai have been cracking down on cyclists in the past six months and I see that as a good thing. Without wanting to generalise, my experience is that cyclists are the biggest offenders of breaking the rules of the road particularly running red lights, going the wrong way down one way streets and cycling without lights. I've had near misses with cyclists doing these things both as a pedestrian and a motorist. Luckily I was taught to proceed with caution, not every driver does.
I'm not sure if you still have to do a test in the UK but there was some sorts of cycling education in primary schools over there when I was young, I always remember being baffled that we could just hop on a bike and hit the road but you weren't supposed to do that in the UK. It does seem like a fairly common sense idea to teach cycling safety in school? It wouldn't cost lives and might save some.
Not for a minute am I saying that any of the dead were anything other than in the wrong place at the wrong time...but staying safe should be everyone's priority. It's clearly not on everyone's mind all the time, but it should be.