I welcome this Bill. While it is a short and technical Bill which we are talking about today, it is also quite significant because it indicates the seriousness with which this Government is treating the need to overhaul our transport infrastructure. I represent Dublin Rathdown and from Stepaside to Stillorgan and all the various townlands throughout my constituency, including Ballinteer, Cabinteely and Dundrum, I regularly hear from commuters struggling with cramped Luas carriages, ghost buses, disappearing cycle lanes and congested roads. I acknowledge, however, that public transport is improving. For example, more than 55 million passenger journeys were taken on Luas services alone in 2025. I also welcome the consideration of extending the green Luas line along the eastern bypass route and I look forward to seeing how that is developed. We are on the right track, forgive the pun, but more needs to be done. For example, we need faster delivery. I appreciate that the Government's Critical Infrastructure Bill will make a real difference to these delivery times but we also need to look at other areas of transport to see how we can make a difference. For example, one of the most common issues my constituents contact me about is who they should approach when a transport problem has arisen. When I follow up with them, I also get a similar response from the various State agencies and local authorities, saying that it is not their area of responsibility. While this Bill is trying to address a key issue of connectivity, responsibility and accountability, we also have existing issues. I ask the Minister to look at how greater administrative and organisational clarity can be provided across the various State agencies. I hope that by expanding the remit of the NTA in this Bill, it will be a first step in providing that level of clarity because it recognises that we need that greater level of co-ordination. I ask that the Minister looks at reviewing the various transport bodies operating in the greater Dublin area. They have overlapping responsibilities, and they have challenges around co-ordination. Would the Minister consider a single authority for the greater Dublin area? The NTA certainly partly fulfils its function but many aspects that I have encountered continue to be retained or delegated to various transport providers, oversight bodies and the local authorities. Thus, with so many bodies, co-ordinating and planning becomes harder, and I fear it ultimately risks a poor return for the taxpayer. Other European cities, for example, operate a single or two-authority approach. In Amsterdam, which is similar-sized city to Dublin in terms of population, the GBB runs the trams, the metros, the ferry and the bus services with cycle paths and open spaces under the authority of a single city local authority. In Dublin, we have four local authorities through which investment in the development of the cycle network via active travel funding is delegated. Since 2022, nearly €600 million has been invested in these active travel schemes across the four Dublin local authorities and this could reach €1 billion by 2030. However, these schemes have not had the impact that was hoped. The lack of co-ordination may be part of the reason because these schemes were designed to encourage a modal shift that would encourage people to leave the car at home and instead cycle to work, school, shops, friends and family. This would result in two benefits: to reduce the use of motor vehicles to free up the road; and to reduce emissions. However, there is a distinct lack of evidence that after six years of investment this spend has resulted in either of these objectives being achieved. There are two key reasons for this. I have spoken previously in the Chamber about the complex social and economic barriers to many taking up cycling and making the shift to cycling, and in particular the barriers for women. Women account for just one in four cyclists in Ireland. Only one in five people cycling to work are women. While these challenges can be overcome, and we can certainly encourage our girls and women to enjoy the benefits that cycling provides, as other countries that have a more equal balance between the genders have proven, it is certainly a generational change that will be required, and this will require changes in many areas of society. A recently published paper on why young girls in Ireland do not cycle is titled, It is a Boy's Thing, so we have a significant challenge from a very young age among our young women. The second reason the active travel scheme has not been as successful as hoped is relevant to this legislation. There has not been an overall strategic and co-ordinated approach to the implementation of these routes. We have had a role out of closed roads, the removal of filter lanes, changed traffic lights sequences and the removal of motor vehicle lanes but never any real consideration what these changes will have on the wider transport network because the traffic does not just disappear. It is diverted, and where is it diverted to is one of the key issues. Throughout the roll out of these schemes, there has been limited if any engagement with transport providers about how they are going to manage this additional transport. There has been limited, if any, attempt to measure the outcomes on traffic movements and patterns - the actual change in cycle, pedestrian and motor vehicle journeys. Funding for these schemes is provided to local authorities to implement them but this is resulting in what is effectively a patchwork of cycle improvements with few, if any, connected journeys and a lack of a comprehensive cycling infrastructure within a geographic or townland locality. This results in frustrations being felt by everybody. The cyclists who continue to have broken journeys, with a mixture of safe and unsafe routes, and other road users who can visibly see underutilised cycle lanes while they sit in traffic. The congestion is increasing and, of course, from an emissions point of view, the longer a motorist sits in traffic, the greater the emissions which, again, might explain why we are not seeing a difference in those outcomes. All of this may explain why the NTA's canal cordon survey, which measures the journeys taken by people on a daily basis, shows that the number of cycle journeys since 2019 are 3,000 fewer. In other words, there are fewer people cycling across the canals than six years ago. All other forms of transport increased. So, again, we do not have an understanding of what is actually going on because we are not really doing the in-depth research around that. Trying to make the right decisions and taking the learnings from all of the spending in the past number of years is important if we are going to ensure that we make these transitions. We need real data. We need meaningful engagement, and we need effective co-ordination on transport planning. This is essential in order to keep the city moving and to enable people to make the journeys they need to make in our city. This Bill is a small but important step in that overall journey, and I ask the Minister to continue that journey and take on board some of the issues I have highlighted.

Sentiment score: 0.18