When preparing for today, I read a document that is for secondary school teachers to use with students to educate them. Just as my colleague, Deputy Whitmore, said, it is about education. The students who will use this programme will learn all about how air pollution happens and what needs to be done to mitigate it. It was a fascinating read but I will come to that in a second. I am a TD for Dublin South-Central. I am sure Members know that because I have probably mentioned it about 3,000 times since I have been in the Dáil. It is a city constituency, and cities have a particular challenge when it comes to air pollution because of the density of population living in them, cars, businesses and all of the different things that contribute to it. It is very difficult then to mitigate it when it is such a built-up urban area. However, there are things being done in the constituency by people trying to mitigate it, and I will come to them. The area I represented on Dublin City Council when I was a councillor was the south-west inner city. That part of the constituency has the lowest amount of green space per square metre per person in the entire country. It is so urban, so built up and so concrete. There is not enough green space and the need for something to be done in that regard was one of the biggest things that came to my door as a councillor and, indeed, that still comes to it as a TD. The document I mentioned earlier was fabulous, and I have it here. It talks about what air pollution actually does and the fact that it is a public health issue. When we see the detrimental effects of air pollution on the human body, it is quite frightening. The document states it causes headaches and forms of anxiety and it impacts on the central nervous system. It causes irritation to the eyes, nose and throat as well as breathing problems. Problems with asthma increase and it causes chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, reduced lung function, infections and cardiovascular disease. It impacts on the liver, spleen and blood. I do not know why I was surprised by this but it also impacts on the reproductive system. It is obviously part of the body but I was quite surprised to read that. If you are living in a very densely populated area that is polluted, it makes sense. I have to agree with Deputy Whitmore. I was not a TD when she brought that legislation forward. I have a number of children and I spent quite a lot of time going to schools, doing collections and going sport and all of the different things they go to. I remember the idling of cars and being half-choked. When I had a lot of kids, I brought them all in the back of the car because we did not have those cool cargo bikes. They did not really exist then. My eldest is now 22 years of age and people did not really like cyclists going around with a trailer on the back, which we saw used in other parts of Europe. When they got older, we went around on bikes. When you cycle with children in the city, you realise how polluted it is. You see how difficult it is through the eyes and lungs of your children, so I was very thankful to see Deputy Whitmore's Bill. I thought it was great. Being naive, because I was not involved in politics like I am now, I thought it would be in by that September but, of course, I heard today that she introduced the Bill in 2021 and it has still not been passed. I echo her plea to pass that because there are still mammies and daddies going around on bikes. Deputy Ahern is here and I know that he is a cyclist and has small children. It is really important to cycle around and to bring your children to various places. It is also important for the schools in a city constituency, which are built on a kind of postage stamp space and do not have a lot of green spaces. I am talking about my constituency but I know it happens in other parts of the country too. There are organisations that are really trying their best to offset the detrimental impacts air pollution has on their environment. I want to namecheck them because it is really important. These are people who spend their Saturday afternoons, their evenings and their Sundays doing things for the rest of us in the city. They are trying to increase biodiversity. They are trying to increase the number of trees, for example. In Dublin 8, in particular, the number of trees is shockingly low. Anyone who drives through Dublin 8 on their way to Leinster House will know that it does not have a huge number of trees. I am not talking about Phoenix Park; I am talking about the city part of the constituency. One of the groups is the Trees for Tenters, which I am part of. We look at how we can increase the number of trees in the area, and not just any old trees but native trees. There is Blooming Crumlin in Dublin 12. It handed out trees recently to people in the area. It means that people now have a tree in their garden. They are the appropriate size for a city garden. We do not all have acres to plant big trees. This is really helping the air quality in the city. There are also clean-up groups. I know we are talking about air pollution but part of the difficulty with air pollution is the amount of rubbish that is often left about the city and it is having a detrimental effect on people. There are environmental groups like Inchicore Environmental Group and the Liberties Litter Pickers. I could probably spend the rest of my time talking about all the different groups but these groups spend their time trying to offset the lack of green space and the air pollution that is in our area in Dublin 8, Dublin 10, Dublin 12 and parts of Dublin 20. This Bill is very welcome and while it is great to have legislative measures, if they are not enforced, they are not really any use. When this Bill is passed, whenever that will be, I ask that the measures in it are enforced. I also plead that Deputy Whitmore's Bill is progressed to the next stage.

Sentiment score: 0.02