I welcome the Bill. The expansion of the terms in the legislation is welcome. We have to recognise that those who seek to access Dublin are not just necessarily from the county of Dublin or the immediate area, but come from further away. I am not sure about the wisdom of placing two Dún Laoghaire constituency Deputies one after the other because I listened to Deputy Devlin's speech and he hit on many of the issues that are important for our area. I, too, feel very strongly about them. One would think a place like Dún Laoghaire benefits from a fine public transport system and, in many respects, that is true. Yet, as we replace the 46A with the E spine, E2 to Dún Laoghaire and the E1 to Bray, we have not had the reliable service we would expect. I welcome the 24-hour nature of the service and it has hugely improved access to the city centre for people in my area, but unfortunately people do not have confidence that the bus stated on the timetable will actually arrive. In fact, this morning, Conor, an intern working in my office, was on a bus that overheated at 9.30 a.m. The weather is lovely and it is great to have the sun shining, but we cannot have a situation where that is causing buses to overheat. He had to wait a long time for a replacement bus to come along. I receive emails over and over again from people in the local area who tell me about ghost buses, something I know the Minister is aware of. We cannot have a situation whereby people try to get a bus to work, but the bus which is supposed to bring them there does not come. When a bus is on the timetable and the real-time information at the bus stop but does not arrive, that is a disaster in many respects. First, it contributes to a lack of faith in the reliability of the system. It causes people to be late. The next bus that comes is already full. The route is one bus short and it means that the capacity of the route is diminished because at rush hour in the mornings buses are full and can barely cope with what is there. If one bus does not turn up, that creates huge stress on the line as a whole and a difficulty for people getting on the next bus that comes. It is the same at the next stop and the stop after that. You end up with lots of people being late for work, which is very unfair and also compromises their faith in the system. The DART is fantastic and is a wonderful service but it is not frequent enough. I know this is a complex problem and is not something that is easily solved. The frequency of the DART is hugely important. Last week, I was in Paris with Granada Football Club in Blackrock as we were playing a tournament there. Getting around Paris is incredibly easy. There is an underground metro system there but it is coupled with a bus system that is much more local. It means you can reliably get to anywhere within Paris within half an hour. The same cannot be said of Dublin. I have been a long time champion of a proper underground metro system for Dublin. That has to be not just part of the plan but part of the implementation. If we had started the metro for Dublin when we started talking about it, it would be built now and we would not be relying on buses, many of which do not operate on an electric basis and are still using diesel, clogging up traffic lanes and contributing to environmental pollution. We need to move to a phase where we accept that underground metro transport is part and parcel of being a modern, European city. I know that sometimes there is an allergy in Irish public policy terms to these massive public infrastructure projects. We have had our fingers burned on some projects, although we also fail to recognise those projects that go ahead, are finished on time or ahead of time and on budget or for less than the initial budget. It happens but that does not get coverage in the newspapers. In reality, there is a fear around large infrastructure projects but the building of a metro does not have to be a massive infrastructure project. Again, look at the example of Paris. I lived in Paris over 20 years ago and when I was there, they were building Line 14, which is known locally as the Meteor. It had a driverless train, which meant there were not the same difficulties if somebody was not available to come to work for whatever personal reason and that the system could still function. They started off with four stops in central Paris. It ran along a relatively limited area. They built four stops and that was the original infrastructural project. After that, they added a stop at either end, followed by another stop and another stop. That same Line 14 now runs from Saint-Lazare, a major train station in Paris, right the way through the centre of Paris and all the way out to Aéroport d'Orly. We have nothing comparable to that in Dublin. We are really lacking in terms of the infrastructure that needs to be provided in that regard and it is time we got going on that, even if it is only to build a small part of it that can then be added to. In my respectful view, that is the way we have to do it. Instead of deciding we will build a 100-stop metro, let us build one line and we can then add to it. It is something that needs to be given huge priority. BusConnects is something that made huge progress for us. I am not yet convinced by the renaming of all the routes. A cultural icon, the 46A, is gone but that is another issue entirely. The replacement of certain routes will take time for people to get used to. The bigger difficulty I have with BusConnects is the consultation with local communities. In Shankill in particular, we had a massive problem. There were 3,500-odd signatures on a petition against it or, specifically, against what it would do to Shankill village. That cannot be allowed to happen. If we are going to build large, effective public transport systems, we must couple with that a respect for the people they are supposed to serve. They cannot destroy small villages in County Dublin if they are meant to serve that community. We need to listen to people. A public consultation has to be real and informed but also something that listens to people and does not impose upon them the decision of a bureaucrat or somebody who is may be an excellent public transport designer but not somebody who has to live with the consequences of the design that ultimately comes from that. The extension of the Luas is hugely important. The Luas does amazing work. It has been a lifeline for many communities, particularly in the south Dublin area, that were just that bit far away from the DART or might not have add access to corridors like the N11. It has worked really well but it can do so much more. I am happy to say that in Dun Laoghaire, we have very advanced cycling infrastructure that is developing all of the time. It is not without its problems. It is not without its huge inconvenience for people in the local community and I think there is a problem with the way it is being built in the same area, at the same time. A road gets done and then a road around the corner gets done, which creates consecutive inconveniencies for the same community but that is for another debate. When the Luas was built, we had this rail corridor that was created. There was an opportunity to put in a really effective cycle corridor that would run in parallel to the Luas. That was not done. As a result, a cyclist cannot cycle along the same corridor as the Luas. What is perhaps more frustrating is that you cannot bring your bicycle onto the Luas. You are prevented from doing that. It is a real missed opportunity. For that microtransport element, the idea is you cannot get on the Luas with your bike at Cherrywood, get the Luas to Ranelagh and then cycle to somewhere that might be adjacent to the Luas but is too far away to walk. We need to do more to allow people to carry bikes on public transport. The Luas has done really good work but it could do so much more. Public transport has to be the backbone of the function of any city. If we are not delivering a public transport system that people can have confidence in, that they can rely on and that is cost effective, we are then failing those commuters. The more people we can persuade to get on the DART, Luas or the bus, the more who are not getting into cars, often on their own, clogging up the roads, creating environmental hazards, making it more difficult for cyclists and pedestrians and generally creating more problems. Let us put in place a system that we can not just be proud of but that we want to use, we can use and we can rely on to get us to work, school or college on time.

Sentiment score: 0.10