Joint Committee on Transport and Communications debate -
Wednesday, 3 Jul 2024

I thank members. We have received apologies from Senator Craughwell.

The purpose of today's meeting, as per the invite, is for the joint committee to discuss the Government's new strategy to manage and reduce congestion, Moving Together: A Strategic Approach to Improving the Efficiency of Ireland’s Transport System. I welcome to the committee the Minister for Transport and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and his officials.

Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against a person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. If witnesses' statements are potentially defamatory in respect of an identifiable person or entity, I will direct them to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where they are not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, any member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any member participating via Microsoft Teams, prior to making a contribution, that they confirm they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

I invite the Minister to make his opening statement.

I thank the Acting Chair.

I am glad to be joined, from the Department, by my assistant secretary, Mr. Caoimhín Ó Ciaruáin, Ms Denise Keoghan, Mr. Maurice Harnett and Mr. Andrew Ebrill. They may be able to contribute and answer questions in addition to my own contribution.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to consider this important and potentially pivotal strategy for transport. Everyone in this room recognises the extent to which our daily lives can be impacted by our travel experiences in both positive and negative ways. A smooth journey that is not impacted by congestion is a happier and healthier one. However, if we get caught up in traffic, this can affect our mood, our productivity and our health in terms of stress, inactivity and pollution.

As members probably know, the impetus for this latest transport strategy came from the climate action plan. Despite Government support for a large-scale transition to electric vehicles, higher penetration levels of biofuels in the fuel mix and unprecedented investment in public and active travel infrastructure, we will fail to achieve our climate targets without addressing the existing inefficiency in the transport system. This much is known. Therefore, this strategy represents the final key policy component in our decarbonisation pathway for transport, helping us to reduce transport demand in an efficient way. I was pleased that, just last week, the Climate Change Advisory Council in its 2024 annual review of the transport sector indicated support for the strategy and, more importantly, recommended its swift implementation.

Decarbonisation is not the whole picture, however. As we began to develop the strategy, we realised there were many other reasons for a wholesale change of approach. In recent decades, like most other countries, car and road-based freight systems have become the dominant means of moving people and goods. Through urban planning and road-building programmes, this trend was supported by allocating more and more of our public and civic spaces to cars, vans and trucks. While this made sense from several perspectives, it did give rise to problems, not least traffic congestion, but also a cultural shift in how we think about public space and prioritise its use. Motorised transport became the priority, while space for people rather than cars became inadvertently demoted. Communities became severed by heavily trafficked streets and active transport became a greater challenge.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I suspect we may have adopted a different approach if we could have envisaged the kinds of challenges we now face. In fact, replicating aspects of our past could provide future opportunities. Before motorised transport was all-pervasive, people walked and cycled to local shops, supported local businesses and lived in a way that limited waste and used resources efficiently. Our towns were thriving marketplaces, as well as vibrant centres for community living. Today, however, many of our old market towns are choked with traffic. Space is at a premium, particularly in towns that date from medieval times. As well as causing localised pollution and health implications, congestion makes it difficult to access shops and services. Equally, it makes it difficult for people to move about safely. This can particularly affect children, disabled persons and the elderly, with implications for independence and community life.

Demand management can make a difference and measures like road space reallocation can be good for business. Taking away through-traffic makes cities and towns more accessible for trading and retail. Where interventions have been made, the evidence tells us that most businesses prefer the people-centred model and would not go back. I think we can all agree that congestion does not work for anyone - not for drivers, not for users of public transport, not for business and certainly not for people who want to walk, wheel or cycle. We need a new approach. Alongside a growing population and a buoyant economy, we find the transport sector at a critical juncture. There is also a growing recognition across the world that the prevailing car-centric model is reaching the limits of its efficiency.

To this end, the new Moving Together strategy is being developed to bring back efficiency and help alleviate the impacts of car dependency on the economy, the environment and the health of our society. While this strategy is about putting people, rather than cars, at the centre of our urban and transport planning systems, it is not about restricting people’s movement. That is never in the Government’s interest. People need to be able to move about freely, make a living, contribute to the economy, be socially and recreationally connected and live a good life.

It is important to reiterate to all members of this committee that cars, vans and trucks will continue to be a vital and important part of our transport mix. For many people, particularly in rural or isolated areas, we know that car journeys will continue to be a critical part of everyday life. Similarly, tradespeople are particularly dependent on vans, for example. This strategy has not been developed in isolation of these facts but simply aims to plan for vehicle use in a better way. However, we do know that heavy traffic makes public transport less reliable and can discourage people from using it. It also makes the environment for vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists, less safe. This, too, discourages people from using active travel, particularly for shorter journeys.

A systemic change is clearly needed and this new strategy aims to bring about this transformation through leveraging a wide array of Government policies and programmes. It proposes 35 recommendations which are the product of a constructive, collaborative and concerted effort across a broad range of stakeholders, including expert sub-groups which were set up to identify the type of interventions that could cumulatively make a lasting and positive impact. Broadly speaking, the recommendations are grouped into different themes like national planning or legislation. As well as recommendations aimed at empowering local authorities, improving freight efficiency and strengthening supports for sustainable mobility, the strategy seeks to identify ways to further embed demand management principles into the public sector and take a long-term approach to taxation, bringing the “polluter pays” principle more to the fore. Reflecting the system-wide nature of the change envisaged, it calls out the need for engagement with sectors like education, sport, tourism, business, retail and industry. Engagement with the citizen is also identified as a key area of focus.

As mentioned earlier, the strategy has been developed to work hand in glove with an extensive range of Government investments and supports, both existing and planned. More detail on these supports and the recommendations are outlined in both the draft strategy and implementation plan which were published for public consultation in mid-April. The closing date for views on the documents is 21 August. It is anticipated that, when implemented, this strategy will play a key role in unlocking the full potential of the Government’s investment in sustainable mobility options by prioritising these modes across the transport system, thus helping to facilitate efficiency, such as bus service efficiency, for example, and improved journey times. At a local level, the strategy looks to ensure that the necessary guidance is in place for local authorities and local council representatives to develop demand management plans for their own areas, plans that are tailored to best suit the bespoke needs of each individual community.

Even though my Department has engaged extensively up to now, I recognise that more voices still need to be heard. To this end, my officials are planning a further round of robust and holistic engagement over the coming months. I am particularly keen that local government representatives engage as much as possible so that the strategy, when complete, fully reflects the types of issues being faced by towns up and down the country in an effort to address congestion. Public officials need to be involved from the outset and that is why today’s meeting is to be welcomed and is another important input into the strategy’s development. I look forward to hearing the thoughts of committee members on how we can use this document to better support more inclusive, accessible and liveable urban centres with cleaner air, more timely public transport and safer spaces for walking and cycling. I would be surprised if we do not all share those same goals.

I welcome the Minister and his officials and thank them for their continuous engagement with the committee. I want to go through a few points. One point I have repeatedly made at the committee is that in the months of July and August, when the schools are closed, people can get around any town or city in Ireland with relative ease. This morning, I got the 7.40 a.m. train and as there is not much traffic in the mornings, I made it from my home in a border area of County Clare to the train station in Limerick city in about nine or ten minutes. However, to do that during the school year might involve a 45- or 50-minute journey because everyone is getting up and out early, dropping kids and trying to get to work. I have always believed there are huge projects in this country that merit progression, including Metro North, rail spurs and the all-Ireland rail review projects. All of these are very important elements but the true nub of our congestion problem, I contend, is the daily drop-off at school gates. I know there is active travel and many other measures but surely to have a better strategy, on top of what the Department of Education is providing for school transport, is the key. Even though the rules are being overhauled by the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, there is an opportunity to be grasped with regard to getting more children to and from school, taking cars off small roads in the mornings and alleviating the congestion that they bring.

I agree with the Deputy. This is an example of how we can turn things around into a win-win. When that school transport issue is addressed, the journey for those who have to drive is much quicker. It is not about being anti-car; it is about recognising that in Dublin, for example, and I am certain it is the same in counties Clare and Limerick, during morning rush hour in school time, 30% of the traffic is made up of children being driven to school. There has been a fundamental shift in my lifetime. When I was going to school, the vast majority of children walked, cycled or took the bus. Now, the vast majority are driven. In fact, we have evolved such an incredibly car-dependent system that in many parts of the country, as I recall from recent censuses, more schoolgirls drive themselves to school than cycle to school. That is crazy because when safe alternatives are provided, there are benefits for health, traffic congestion, and a cleaner environment and so on. We are also seeing congestion outside schools during drop-off and pick-up, even in very recently built schools. It has been very disheartening for me to see that schools built in the past decade have effectively been designed with the assumption that the reality is everyone is driven to school. We then find there is chaos outside the school gates without proper set-down and where it is impossible to cater for the volume of cars. We have a real problem.

We are addressing this through the safe routes to school programme, which is an attempt to reverse and change the situation, and deliver improvement in the environment around the school and the way to it. Some 930 schools applied to be part of that. Our resources were limited so approximately 275 are involved in the scheme. To be honest and upfront, the latest figure we have is that approximately 65 of those projects have been completed. The problem is when we start to change anything in our society, and change is difficult, we suddenly find that what seems like a good idea in that who could argue against making it safe for our children to walk, cycle or get the bus to school, it involves changes on the ground that, for a variety of reasons, may discommode some people. We find there is often real opposition. It takes a lot of public consultation and a very lengthy process to try to get agreements to even simple measures, such as safe set-down areas or traffic-calming measures around schools.

I absolutely agree with the Deputy. Like so many other things, this has to be an area where local government leads and where there is agreement at council level. We in Dublin are not going to tell people in Ennis, Shannon or Kilfenora what they should do outside primary or secondary schools there. It does have to come from local authority level whereby a local authority makes a decision that it will strategically back this and change the patterns.

I am sorry for interjecting but the clock is always against us. I thank the Minister for his detailed reply.

Some of the positive gains we have made over the past three years are now at risk of being eroded. I am speaking of the Local Link service. Many of the new routes that have been licensed by the National Transport Authority, NTA, are linked to locations in rural Ireland where there are Ukrainian war refugees and international protection applicants. One specific example is that of Loop Head, which is the location of the famous Loop Head lighthouse in County Clare. There is now a beautiful Local Link bus that goes up and down that peninsula every day carrying locals, schoolchildren and, crucially, Ukrainian war refugees. Those war refugees will move out next week. Accommodation is being consolidated and they are being moved to a different venue. We only just found out today that bus service, which is so crucial, will be withdrawn. It is a service that serves the local community and the refugee population, but also one of our key tourism sites. There are many facets to this matter, including overlapping Departments, but I ask the Minister to be a champion for retention of such services. Whatever strings brought those services in the first place, including whether they were tied to accommodation centres, we should not lose whatever we gained over the past three years.

I absolutely agree with the Deputy. I will check up on this. I would be disappointed if we were to lose that bus service to Loop Head. I know the area well. I presume the good people of Kilrush, Kilkee, Carrigaholt and so on are very concerned. What has happened with those local services is that young people and local people are flocking to them. I will follow up and look at that.

As it happens, I was talking to the Deputy's county colleague Senator Garvey just before coming to the meeting. She made the point, to take County Clare as an example, that from where she is based in Inagh, something like 12 buses a day now go north, connecting to Ennistymon and beyond, up to Lisdoonvarna, Ballyvaughan and so on. It has been transformative and is working. I agree with the Deputy that we put in services to make sure that the Ukrainian visitors were able to access local towns and villages. I will look at the details of the Loop Head service. It would be disappointing, having put it in, to have to take it out. Maybe the NTA and the local authority have a good reason for that. Generally speaking, however, while Loop Head is beautiful and a fantastic tourism area, that service is more for locals.

I fear the situation will be replicated. I ask the Minister to raise this at Cabinet. Due to what we have gained in respect of those services, we should decouple them from the initial criteria and just say it is merited to have a bus in that community - it could be anywhere in Ireland - and retain that service.

I have two final questions. I will go through them quickly. Point 29 of the policy references the insurance industry and the role it will have to play. I tabled a parliamentary question last week that I hope the Minister can tease out a little. We have a very good database of the number of taxed vehicles in the country. Gardaí can drive past, if they are in one of the newer cars in the fleet, and identify cars on the roads that are not taxed through the Garda computer system. It is now time, in light of all the road safety issues, and we have had four road fatalities in the past 24 hours, that the Department cross-references the insurance database, which is held by the industry, with the taxation database. Far too many uninsured cars are on the road every single day. Tax is one thing but to not be insured is absolutely criminal. It is putting a huge number of people at risk. I put down a parliamentary question on this. The reply was reasonably warm. The Minister is keen on cross-referencing both databases, which should instantly show up who is driving on our roads. If a car is still licensed and has not been scrapped, it is either parked up somewhere growing moss on its windscreen, or is on the road. If it is on the road, it had better be taxed or insured because God help the person who may be involved in a road traffic accident with it.

My final question relates to the long-proposed Shannon rail spur. The Minister has given some positive indication over the years that the heavy rail system he is suggesting that will go from Limerick city out towards County Clare may see the light of day in the next three years, with potential stops near Corbally, Thomond Park and Moyross. What will happen beyond that, however, is still a bit up in the air. People are continuously asking about this fabulous idea of a rail spur into Shannon with stops at the town, the industrial hub and further on to the airport terminus. Is there any indication at all as to whether that will ever happen or a timeline for when it might happen? Is it still a pipe dream for the county and region? Until we provide Shannon Airport with proper road and rail transport, we will never be quite able to compete with the other airports in Ireland, including Dublin. The passenger cap at Dublin Airport is a major issue, but the number of passengers can be doubled by using Shannon Airport, and probably Cork Airport as well, without changing a single thing, without hiring any additional staff and without building any new infrastructure on the ground. The capacity is there already. Surely, there are already some answers to Ireland Inc's current air problems. The answers to those problems lie elsewhere in the country, on the west coast and specifically Shannon.

The Deputy reminded me, and it is appropriate, that the committee should mark the terrible loss of life on our roads in recent days. There were two deaths in County Mayo yesterday and there have been other fatalities. It is something that is our primary concern. Everything we need to do involves thinking about how to reduce that pattern. I am not aware that any of those recent accidents have anything to do with the insurance issue the Deputy raised, but I wanted to mark that.

The legislation we introduced last year in the Dáil - the road traffic Act - has measures that improve and enhance the Garda's ability to assess whether cars are properly insured. I am glad the Deputy got a warm response to his parliamentary question. We need to now use that capability to make sure all cars are properly insured at all times.

With regard to the Shannon rail spur, I will again reference a colleague of mine. Deputy Leddin and others have said the same thing as Deputy Crowe. There is a real issue. Massive investment is coming into Dublin, including metro north, DART+, BusConnects and the Luas to Finglas. The list goes on and on. Dublin needs all that. It is not that we should stop the development of Dublin.

As is stated in our national planning framework, we need balanced regional development and that means at we also have to invest in Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick. I do not purposely mention Limerick last in this regard. The critical mechanism that will help us in this regard is the strategic rail review. I expect it to be agreed by Government very shortly and with our colleagues up North this month. We will then move to the implementation phase. In that context, the review specifically refers to the potential for the development of the Limerick metropolitan rail system, including a rail spur to Shannon. Again, the Deputy is correct that not only would it be of benefit for Shannon Airport but also for Limerick itself and other towns between it and Shannon. Such a spur would provide wider connectivity. To my mind, this is a really attractive way to counterbalance the imbalanced development in our country.

As I understand it, there are a variety of route options. This has been looked at before. There are complications. Land is readily available to facilitate the building of the line into the town and to the airport. Building a new rail line is expensive, but it is not anything like building a new metro system, for example. We have asked the European Investment Bank to carry out an assessment of some of the implementation plans relating to the strategic rail review. We are talking about a project that will take two to three decades to complete. We are effectively committing - and any future Government will have to do the same - €1 billion each year to the project. We are investing in the same way that we invested in the motorway programme, namely in a systemic and long-term way. That approach brought the cost down and improved delivery because the contractors and everyone else knew there would be work available for two decades. Similarly, the next three decades have to be dominated by investment in public transport. It is really important there is a regional balance to that. With regard to Limerick, it is not just about the rail spur to Shannon, it is also about how we use the Ennis and Nenagh lines, the Shannon-Foynes line, which we are reopening, and the line to Limerick Junction. We must also consider how we put in new stations in Shannon, Ballysimon and Moyross. I do not want to involved in politics of it, but, as I understand it, the new Mayor of Limerick is very committed to that. My sense is that the people of Limerick voted for that in the recent election. It was not a small issue in that election. There is public support for this. From my side, at a political level in government, there is also support for it because it is in Dublin's interest that Limerick rises and expands faster. That line would help tremendously in this regard.

I thank the Minister for his presentation. I also thank his officials. I wish the Minister all the best. In light of his announcement that he will not be rejoining us after the general election, I take this opportunity to say that it has always been a pleasure and privilege to work with him.

I want to raise a couple of matters. As has been mentioned in the context of rural issues, the Local Link service has developed and done great work throughout the country. However, I am aware of a number of services that have been set up locally and that, having applied, are still awaiting funding. The in Sligo to north Leitrim service is just sitting there. I spoke to Anne Graham last week and she informed me that everything is ready to go but that the NTA is stuck for funding for the service. There has been a huge outcry in respect of it. There are many other examples in this regard. That is not to take from the good services that are being provided in many places but there are still a lot of areas that feel left behind and that do not have the level of service they require.

I met people earlier today to discuss issues relating to car hire. There is still a problem with people using electric vehicles. Even when the electric vehicles are available, people are not taking the option. When people call to hire cars and are told that an electric car is available, 19 out of 20 say, "No, thank you". This comes down to the anxiety relating to charging. The roll-out of public charging points across the country is absolutely vital. I have made the point to the Minister before that the people who need to use electric vehicles most are those who travel most and who put up the most mileage during the year. Generally, they cannot either afford electric vehicles or who live in areas in which there are adequate charging points in place. It would make a big difference if there were additional investment in that area. This is one of the key things we need to deal with.

My third point relates to rail. On Sunday last, there was an event to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Luas. The Luas has been a tremendous success for Dublin city and for commuters. At a conference I attended last week, one of the contributors put up the newspaper articles from the time when the Luas was being planned. They were full of negativity and stated that the project was a waste of money and time, that nobody would ever use it, that it would be another white elephant and so on. There were many reports from academics and various agencies that dismissed the Luas at the time. These stated that it should not proceed and was not necessary.

That brings me to a point I want to make about my area in the context of the western rail corridor and the link from Coolaney to Sligo and on to Galway. Again, we have a situation whereby there is resistance to something that could make a major difference to people in a rural area. There needs to be an element of grasping the nettle and stating that something which is going to work today will also work in 100 or 200 years' time and that it needs to be put in place. I would welcome the Minister's comments in respect of that matter.

I thank Deputy Kenny for his kind words at the beginning of his contribution.

Local Link is part of Connecting Ireland. It is not just Local Link, Bus Éireann runs a number of the services as well. This is an NTA-led scheme. The first phase was designed as a five-year programme. We are about halfway through that. It has had an incredible start. We were rolling out a new or revised bus service every week for the first two years. We now have a range of additional services we want to introduce. We will have to manage our budget to allow us to that. There is a wider challenge within our Department with the public service obligation we need to pay to run all of the public transport services. It is not just Connecting Ireland, it is also all of the Bus Éireann interurban services, Dublin Bus services and other services. That is something we will manage this year. I expect that we may require a Supplementary Estimate by the end of this year to make sure we close the gap that exists in respect of the public service obligation. The latter is complicated, particularly as it relates to the Department of Social Protection's budget as well as that of our Department. I am very confident that we will be able to deliver that.

In October's budget, we will be able to provide real clarity around public service funding into next year. That will allow many of the services - such as the ones the Deputy mentioned - that are ready to go but that need financial certainty to be rolled out. In any event, the nature of the way this has worked, looking at the past two years, is that most of the services may have been planned during the year but we would have typically started to introduce them towards the end of the year. It will be similar this year. That is the pattern we have adopted. We tend to get many new services coming in at year-end or early in the new year. I am confident that the five-year Connecting Ireland plan will be delivered. It is proving to be extremely successful. If anything, it has exceeded expectations such has been the public demand.

We have a separate issue when it comes to Local Link. We have contract arrangements with the Local Link companies that we have to manage. Those companies provide the vast majority of the Connecting Ireland services. I am confident we can do that and that we can provide greater certainty, longer term timeframes and so on in order that the valuable work the companies do is supported. That is also in the mix in terms of what we need to do in the coming months.

With regard to car hire and electric vehicles, there has been a wider slowdown and, in some instances, a reduction in the uptake of electric vehicles. This is not the case if plug-in hybrid vehicles are included. More than half of new electric vehicles are of the plug-in variety. If those are included, the level of uptake continues to grow. The pure battery electric vehicle options have seen a certain decline, not just in Ireland but pretty much across the western world. There is a variety of issues involved. As the Deputy said, these include range anxiety and the availability of charging infrastructure. In the past year, second-hand vehicle values have also had an impact.

Now, that will not impact car hire, but its wider impact and the cost of repair have been some of the issues where we have seen it happen. On the issue of charging infrastructure, I am confident we will be able to and are resolving it. The number of public charging points available increased from about 1,700 in September 2022, less than two years ago, to 2,400 now. A whole range of schemes exist in this context. We launched our EV national charging plan in May this year. A whole range of schemes exists. These are fully funded and we have allocated €100 million to them. These will now start to be rolled out and my understanding is that TII is on the point of contracting for many of these endeavours. It will begin with the most important. On the main motorway networks, where under European legislation we will be required to do it, we are going to deliver banks of fast chargers on time. These will allow people to charge their cars in the time it takes to go in and get a cup of coffee and the paper, or whatever, and come back out to the car. That network already exists from many private operators, but we are going to back up that infrastructure with support and funding to ensure the motorway network is fully serviced for fast charging.

At more destination charging areas, we are going through the process of selecting the 200 - I think - sports clubs that will be able to avail of their location for charging points. This will mean it will be possible to go to training or a match, to watch the kids, or whatever, and the car can be charging during that time. This scheme, too, is fully funded and in roll-out mode.

One scheme that is probably taking longer than I would have liked it to have done, and longer than it should have, concerns the local authority infrastructure charging networks. This initiative is now also in train. The local charging infrastructure in the cities, including Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and some others, is more ready to go. Ironically, this is an area where urban Ireland may have more of a challenge than rural Ireland. This is because the vast majority of the houses in a county like Leitrim, for example, do not have the charging problem that can exist in Dublin, where there may be terraced rows of houses and the question arises of how to park cars when there are no driveways. Most of the houses in Leitrim, though, do not have this problem. Charging at home will still account for, and we want it to account for, about 80% of all charging. This is because it is cheaper, better for the grid and better in so many different ways. In terms of decarbonisation, too, if we can switch rural areas to the use of electric vehicles, this will give us a much bigger bang for our buck in climate terms because travel distances tend to be longer. It really does work.

I could go on because there are several other charging initiatives we are putting in place, including in the midlands in the context of the EU just transition fund. We have 60 to 80 chargers planned for that area. I take the point that was made. We are going to deliver all these chargers and this will be part of the solution to enable us to see the adoption of EVs taking off further. They are better cars, cheaper to run and cleaner for the environment. Every which way, they are better. There will, therefore, be an inexorable switch away from the use of fossil fuels and towards the use of EV cars.

I am sorry for taking so long, but regarding the Luas, I happened to be at the very first trip taken on it. I was a TD for Dublin South at the time and spokesperson on transport. I also had a particular interest in it, having lobbied for the Luas for decades. I was at its 20th birthday on Sunday. Every time we start to invest in public transport or, indeed, to put in some of the demand management measures this strategy sets out, there are also people who say this approach will never work and will bring disaster. Lo and behold, the exact opposite takes place. People want public transport, prefer quieter streets and like it when we improve the public realm. At this stage, I cannot think of an example of a public transport project that we have had to withdraw because of a lack of demand, or of a traffic management measure to promote sustainability and quieter environments we have had to reverse because people said it did not work or they did not want it. These initiatives do work. It is just that change is difficult. It is also the case that it is politically advantageous for some to play up people's concerns for electoral benefit. That is not actually serving the people in the end.

The other issue, which the Minister mentioned in his opening remarks, relates to the more urban sense of how every market town in the country is choked up with traffic and space is at a premium. The Dublin traffic plan is the big one we are seeing before us now in respect of addressing this issue. Those of us who travel in and out through Dublin recognise that at some critical times there is a major problem with congestion and all that goes with it. I know that a plan has been put in place and has the support of Dublin City Council, but some people have reservations about it as well. The big reservation that must be borne in mind is that approximately 20% of people have disabilities. While many of these people might have access to public transport at times, they must always be able to get very close to where they need to go because they may not be able to gain access otherwise. It is vital that we consider those people who use cars to spin around in, including those with a visual impairment, wheelchair users, etc., in the context of these plans. This aspect must very much be borne in mind in respect of any plan being put in place.

We also have the situation, of course, where we must live in the real world. I spoke to someone recently who has a daughter who works in a late-night venue in the city centre. When she comes out of work, there is no public transport and seldom is it possible to get a taxi, so she often rings home to get someone to pick her up. If there are restrictions on where people can go, it becomes a problem in this type of situation. There needs to be a proper examination of the time zones when traffic management plans of this type are being put in place if this is possible. These initiatives can have a detrimental impact because we are all aware of how dangerous, unfortunately, Dublin city centre can be at certain times, particularly for vulnerable females leaving work, possibly in late-night venues, etc. We must consider all these aspects. I was disappointed with the intervention of the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, in respect of the traffic management plan. I did not think it was necessary and felt it was inappropriate. We must all work together to try to deliver in this area. We should be trying to do this as a team effect. It is certainly a poor reflection on the team that is in government that such a thing occurred in the first place.

I hope the Minister will be able to set out information in respect of other issues concerning access through Dublin city centre. Obviously, this is something that may happen in other urban areas too. We may have to look at restrictions because of congestion. I refer, in particular, to those who may be delivering goods and services to shops and those who work in the construction industry, etc. A whole range of industries needs this type of access to urban areas regularly. All these aspects must be borne in mind. I thank the Minister.

I thank the Deputy. I will come back on all those points. First, on the western rail corridor, I should have articulated the answer to this query. I am very supportive of us reopening the section from Claremorris to Athenry because I believe it can be part of a strategic switch not only to passenger journeys along that western rail corridor but also to rail freight. This is vital to improve road safety, to stop us having these collisions involving heavy goods vehicles, to decarbonise our transport system and to reduce congestion. There are so many benefits. It is a politically divisive strategy. Not everyone agrees with it and different parties will have to set out their views. Can we really see a revival of rail freight here? We have the lowest level of rail freight of any European country at 1%. The European average would be at least 10%. Can we achieve a tenfold increase in rail freight? I think we can. Infrastructure projects like the western rail corridor are vital to realising this prospect and encouraging business development in the west of Ireland.

The western rail corridor is contained as a recommendation in the strategic rail review. As I recall, it recommended that we start its construction in this decade. It is, therefore, very much centre stage in any recommendations that the likes of the EIB come back regarding which projects we should prioritise. Again, going back to the point about balanced regional development, I think we should prioritise the western rail corridor because it will bring business to the west. That is my own view. There are different views on this matter and it is very much contested. Some people say that rail freight will never work here because the distances are too short. I do not agree with that view because the world is changing and the economics of rail freight are changing too.

Before coming to the question posed about Dublin, it is important to recognise that traffic management measures must come into place in local authority areas right around the country. Sometimes this will involve roads investment as well. We need to invest in our roads for safety and to improve our public realm. I will give an example the Deputy will be familiar with. The town of Carrick-on-Shannon is crippled by the traffic moving through it so many times during the week.

We have a project to address this problem. I could think of a list as long as your arm of many other examples of towns we are looking to revive by taking out the through traffic. Now, for the county council in each of these areas, and Leitrim County Council in this case, if we are going to provide this bypass to remove the through-traffic, would it not do the devil and all in terms of improving Carrick-on-Shannon?

It is a spectacularly beautiful town. Let us make the most of the opportunity to take the through traffic out by putting that new road section in.

There has been much public comment in recent days on the Dublin scheme. I repeat what I said at the Luas launch on Saturday, which was that we need to proceed immediately. This is not something that can wait. For the sake of Dublin city and the traders, and not just the wider public, Dublin city needs a boost. When you enhance public transport and make it safer to walk and cycle, making it a more attractive public realm, that will benefit everyone in Dublin city. I would be deeply concerned if we delay. I would be slightly concerned about the likes of those variations where we might only apply certain measures between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Do we think it is safer at 8.30 p.m. such that we start bringing traffic back in when it is dark?

Perhaps not. My concern is that, as we have seen in the likes of College Green, when you start putting in conditions like that, you sometimes weaken the real benefits that come from proper traffic management design.

This is a matter for local authorities. The city manager and, I would argue, the council, have to have a central role. Going back to what I said, we will not tell every county what to do down to street level, because that will not work, so it has to be city-led. To my understanding, the council and the public consultation in this case could not have been clearer. There was overwhelming support for the sort of measures that are being proposed. I believe we should proceed. We have been dogged by decades of delay in Dublin. Anytime we have put in restrictions, such as no right turn at the bottom of George's Street, no left turn at the bottom of Dawson Street, or pedestrianising Grafton Street or Henry Street, we have never regretted it. Change will not be easy here. Change is difficult. I have listened to the likes of Louis Copeland on Capel Street, who I know well, and others. I fully understand his concerns about how we protect retail business in the centre. There is a wider issue. The corrupt planning of Dublin and the corrupt planning of the motorway system brought all the life out onto a ring road and has undermined our city centre. We are dealing with the legacy of that. That does not mean we should not apply the best modern traffic management thinking to the city.

We have to make sure that we provide for accessibility for people with accessibility needs. First and foremost, that means improving the public transport system because many people with accessibility issues cannot drive. If we get the bus system to work and make it safer to walk and cycle, that improves it first and foremost for those who cannot drive. The real risk here is that we might dilute some of the schemes to meet certain immediate concerns, which you have to listen to but which would undo the fundamental benefit that accessibility groups will gain when there is a public transport system that works. These traffic management measures in Dublin are needed to get our bus system working. The same would apply in Cork and Limerick. This morning, there were many problems with our bus network in Cork. Deputy O'Rourke would know there is a similar issue with the buses turning up in Navan. Part of it is that they are stuck in traffic. Buses which have to get through Dublin city centre and back out to Navan or other towns will benefit when we prioritise and provide them with real fast conditions. That is what we need to do. That benefits people with access issues more than anyone else.

I will pick up on the issue of electric vehicles. What is the Minister's sense of the transition to electric vehicles? I accept that we preferably want to get people onto public transport and active travel. The Minister touched on the point that we had the first six-month figures from SIMI. He referred to the slowdown in sales in the western world. The big opportunity for electric vehicles is battery electric vehicles as opposed to plug-in hybrids. What is the Minister's sense of that transition as it relates to Ireland, the prospect of a second-hand market and, as Deputy Kenny and others have mentioned, the incentives in those areas that, in the longer term, are likely to still be car-dependent? The intervention needs to be in the right place at the right time to deliver the right outcome. Firstly, I ask the Minister to reflect on where we are in the transition, and secondly on the supports and interventions that he believes are necessary to deliver the right outcomes. There have been some criticisms of the planned reductions in electric vehicle supports in the years ahead. Does he think that needs to be reviewed in light of the slowdown and the transition?

I believe we will switch to all battery electric vehicles within a decade. I see all new cars being such a mode for a variety of reasons. They cost less to run. They are much simpler in engineering terms. One benefit of battery electric versus plug-in hybrid electric is that there are far fewer moving parts and components. With the plug-in hybrid system, there are basically two drive trains. There is the electric drive train and still the combustion engine in locations where you do not have the full battery car. In effect, the first option is a better car, with better engineering, a lower cost to produce and a lower cost to run. It has a better emissions profile. Obviously we prefer for people to drive plug-in hybrids to fossil fuel cars, but the emissions reductions from 100% battery electric are quantitatively better.

The other benefit is that if we can switch our entire car fleet, and indeed van and truck fleet, which I think will all happen, with everything including trucks being electrified, we then have a demand for electricity which helps us to provide a stable grid and back-up power. We will have to switch towards charging systems so the reverse flow can take place. That gives us significant benefits in running a renewable electric system. For Ireland particularly, since our distances are not too long and our population is very distributed, with a significant percentage of houses with driveways where it is easy to plug in, with a balancing capability when there is an electric transport fleet, it is absolutely in our interest to make the switch. It has slowed down in the last six months. I expect it to come back.

I will answer the Deputy's question on second-hand vehicle value. I am no expert on this so I bow to the SIMI and others. I know from talking to some garages that I am in touch with that prices were high up until about a year ago and then suddenly dropped. That sudden change has probably spooked many people. We will have to look at measures to support and incentivise battery electric vehicles, particularly in the commercial fleet side, including the likes of benefit-in-kind and other measures. That may help us to deliver a more stable second-hand market and make sure that section of the industry switches over too.

As we talked about earlier, charging infrastructure is key. Regarding early interventions, we have significant supports. There is not just the grant, which went from €5,000 down to €3,500, but also VRT, tax and other benefits which equate to something like roughly €5,000 or €6,000, as I recall. I do not see any immediate further reductions in the electric vehicle grant. I would be interested to hear what the Deputy would do. My own instinct would be to leave be what is there for the moment until we get the sales back up and have a period of stability.

I see that the prices of the cars have come down quite significantly. It is uncertain what will happen there because of some of the tariff policies the European Commission is looking at. My view, which I state in Brussels as well as here, is that we should be wary of trying to protect European car industries through a tariff approach. European exports to the likes of China are not insignificant and it is such a complicated connected market that I do not think it would protect the European car industry. The best way of protecting it is to be better at making electric vehicles, particularly at the entry point, and getting them to be smaller and lighter.

It is difficult with electric vehicles but broadly there should be lighter cars where the production price is reduced to make access to the market easier. My view is this is how the European car industry will be saved and not from behind trade walls. In the meantime we should maintain the broad supports while looking for some additional supports, particularly in the fleet area.

I thank the Minister. I want to ask about school transport and the Minister's sense of the opportunity that is there. I have to say it frustrates me as to how many of the gaps are not filled by local services and the potential that is there for scheduled services. We have increasing services through Connecting Ireland and Local Link and it is hoped we will have more in the years ahead. I have any number of examples of issues that arise. One particular example that comes to mind is in Stamullen, where because of the strict criteria in the school transport scheme a large cohort of dozens of pupils are excluded from the school transport scheme. Tweaking it this year or next year might make a difference but what would change it overnight is if the scheduled services that run in the area were immediately made available to young people and ran at a time that suited the school timetables.

I agree with Deputy O'Rourke. I hope we can sort that issue in Stamullen. It is the Department of Education and Bus Éireann that can deal with it in the short run. I agree with Deputy O'Rourke. Last year we sat down with the Department of Education to review the school public transport system. I strongly advocated for greater integration between scheduled public services and the school transport system for exactly the same reasons Deputy O'Rourke has cited. We agreed in principle and we agreed to introduce some pilot projects this September to see how it would work. I do not know whether they have been publicly announced yet but my recollection is that Roscommon and Limerick are two of the local areas where we will do this. There is a need to test them to ensure child safety and how they would work. The principle already works in urban areas. In Dublin schoolchildren on the bus get scheduled services. It is not as if it would be something completely different.

The benefit of this would be twofold. Many school buses tend to be older buses. They are run for perhaps 250 days a year so, therefore, the economics of getting a new bus is trickier. A scheduled service runs for 365 days a year, which helps to get newer fleet. To go back to Connecting Ireland services, there might be five, three or seven services a day but if school transport could be integrated it may allow the services to be ramped up to go from seven to nine services or from three to five services. In a sense, additional services can be added by doing it this way.

Often the numbers are difficult. There is an issue with whether there are enough people to justify a school bus. There are fewer of these problems when joining schools to scheduled services. We will start piloting this in September. If it proves successful we should look at widespread deployment of the idea. The national investment framework for transport in Ireland states that one of the first things we will do is use existing assets, rather than always having to build new, and this is an example. By integrating the two we get efficiencies in both which benefit school transport and local link services.

There is very welcome investment in main street upgrades. It is active travel spend really. I can see it in my county where there is significant investment in roads infrastructure, in line with plans. There is always an issue about whether a road is too narrow and about the upheaval during the works period. Some of this upheaval has gone on for an extended period. I can point to individual projects in my county where, for whatever reason, and it will come out in the wash, projects due to last a year are running into two years. This is a source of frustration. It is important there is good governance and oversight of individual projects. My additional concern is that it then has an impact on other projects in neighbouring areas. The bad experience in town X has a contagion effect. It increases resistance and opposition to what should be good stories about investment and improvements in transport plans. This is a broad point and I do not know whether the Minister is aware of it or concerned about it.

I agree with what Deputy O'Rourke has said. My sense is that one of the reasons it may be the case is with regard to the underground wires, pipes, electricity cables and telecommunications cables. Something might look like a simple enough project but once we open a road what lies underneath is the biggest challenge. Co-ordinating this is often the best way to make sure we get speedy projects. I agree with Deputy O'Rourke that the length of works can be very frustrating.

I will take this slot but if anybody wants to come back in for a second round I ask them to raise their hands. In his opening statement the Minister spoke about the Climate Change Advisory Council suggesting that swift implementation of these measures is necessary. I agree with this. For the past four or five years Deputy Ryan has been Minister for Transport but he has spent 30 years in activism for better transport in the country. What does he see as being the current barriers and reasons for delays in implementing these measures?

I was involved as chair of the Dublin Transportation Office in the early 1990s. I have been working on this in a public way since then. I would argue the biggest impediment to progress is when various agencies of the State do not row in the same direction. I do not want to give examples but going back to the mid-1990s we had the issue of the metro. CIÉ was touting a rail link from the eastern rail system versus the Dublin Transport Office arguing for something else. Sometimes we get competing visions for where we are going, and I include local authorities in this. When two or three agencies of the State pull together in the same direction then we move fast. When they pull against each other we go nowhere. This is one of the biggest issues.

I agree with the Minister on that. People have many different reasons as to why they want to get rid of traffic congestion, and whether the goal is to reduce emissions, improve air quality or improve the economic benefits that accrue to an area all of these reasons add up. If we look at something such as the town centre first policy where we are trying to rejuvenate town centres, and the Croí Cónaithe fund where we are trying to assist people to bring town centre buildings back into use as a home, there are a number of areas where the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has a big role to play. Where a terraced building is being developed as a home there is often a narrow little strip of footpath outside. It is a terror for somebody walking out with a child in the morning. The funding available to them does not allow the homeowner to develop the street frontage. There has to be buy-in from the Department of housing as the urban regeneration funds will cover this. There needs to be funding at local authority level for interventions at street level which are outside the remit of the building owner.

There is also a health issue. We know about the impact of air quality on health, especially on the lungs of little children walking to school. Any parent who has ever walked to school in the morning knows there is a line of traffic, and depending on the weather conditions you can almost feel that horrible congestion in your chest when you are breathing it in. The Department of Rural Community and Development also has a role. How do we pull these Departments together? There have been calls for a Minister for infrastructure. Does the Minister think this is the direction to go on it?

There is a separate case for such a Minister. To answer the question specifically with regard to the street level, I would argue the key pulling together is by the local authorities. It is not about getting the Department of housing or rural development down to street level because that is not their job. What would they know about the street level? Perhaps we have disempowered local authorities too much. This is my personal sense.

Local authorities might not always agree with me on the vision. It is a matter for the local electorate to decide who to vote for and what it wants them to do. However, one cannot say in one breath, "We want to give more power to local authorities" and then in the next breath say, "You have to do this". However, I think where there will be a steer for local authorities will be in this way. Increasingly, they will be very constrained in relation to budget. In recent years in the Department of Transport, we were pushing to expend all our money and we did, by and large, but in the next few years there will be a huge excess of projects ready to be built, rather than ready to be funded. It is appropriate for central government to say that it will prioritise funding for local authorities that help it meet its climate targets, are working in an integrated way in terms of the national planning framework and deliver compact low-carbon development, which is what we are clearly saying we want. For those local authorities which might decide they are not going that direction, that is their decision but they will not be able to access similar funding in a world where funding constraints will probably be our biggest challenge.

Returning to what I was saying about local authorities, I was involved in campaigning back in the day and I always remember the advice we got about looking at a street was that the first question to ask was what was the street for. One looks first at the function of the street, what is happening and the shape – the speed, modal share, patterns and so on – and it is only then that one looks at the design of the street and how one wants to split up the space. That can only be done by local authority engineers and so on. We have a problem that for five or six decades our entire system has been about how we get the cars through quicker everywhere and how we get out-of-town retail so that everyone can drive to that and park there. That has been the dominant thinking in all Irish local authorities and not only here but in the United States and elsewhere. However, increasingly, internationally as well as locally, people are saying that it does not work because if everyone is in the car, then everyone gets stuck in traffic and the streets then become a distributor road rather than a living street. It is happening. It is like what the Acting Chairman said about Croí Cónaithe. It is hugely popular and people are starting to take that up. Also the towns that think in this way are the ones where the jobs are going, where house prices go up, where investment is taking place and where you are in a virtuous circle. Towns that do not will fall behind. That understanding at local authority level cannot be forced. We can encourage it but it has to come from the bottom up, from local communities themselves.

I agree. An example I saw close to my constituency is the work that was done on Dún Laoghaire main street. It was during Covid times, etc., but the local authority had planned it anyway.

What is the Minister’s view on putting these measures in? People do not like change. One gets used to doing something a certain way and maybe one has a fear of change. I mean bringing in temporary time-bound measures - road-space allocation, different measures in towns and villages – for a period to allow proper assessment to be made and to reassure the businesses that fear losing business because people cannot park outside the premises. I think most businesses where those interventions are done actually benefit. They benefit from the walking traffic where people find their towns are nicer places to be and they spend more money locally. What does the Minister think about doing something for, say, 12 months and then going back to the people to ask if they want to keep it or go back to how it was? Would that be helpful for local authorities?

I absolutely think it would be helpful. The Acting Chair asked earlier about what was holding us back. Change is difficult, as he said, and it is often contested. Increasingly in Ireland it is contested in the courts. That is increasingly an issue that makes it very difficult to innovate, experiment or deliver things quickly. I will give an example in own constituency but it is an example people will know, namely, Strand Road in Sandymount where we were looking at putting in a cycle lane. That was contested and a judgment was given and appealed. We have been waiting almost a year and a half now or longer on the appeal court judgement. That process has probably taken four years from concept, the local authority deciding to proceed and the project being judicially challenged to the current stage where we are still awaiting a court decision. The project was not without consequences for the local area, and local people have the right to express concerns, but the four-year process is the opposite of experimentation or being able to test. It is four years of nothing happening. That is a challenge that we need to resolve. The court system has to consider how to make sure we do not turn Ireland into a litigious battleground where it is very difficult to do any innovation or deliver projects.

Under the legislation at the moment, under a Part 8 process to do interventions, for instance, or under Road Traffic Act section 38 interventions, it is within the gift of the local authority to make that time-bound decision and say that it will do these interventions for 18 months and then make an assessment. On assessment, one gets plenty of anecdotal information from people when you meet them and it is generally people who are against it who give their views. The people who benefit from the interventions, enjoy them and do well from them tend to be a little quieter about it. We very much need economic assessments to go hand-in-hand with those measures so that we can present evidence to people at the end of that trial period. I would ask children going to school if they enjoyed their walk or cycle to school more now compared with 18 months ago so that we can provide that evidence. As the Minister says, this is something that we will not be able to do overnight but this is the direction in which we need to go. We need to provide that evidence for people too.

I agree. Part of the problem we have had over the past five decades is that we have been going in a certain direction and the only assessment that tended to be made was on the average journey-time savings for someone driving for a relatively short section of whatever project was being built - we might save ten minutes on every car journey and multiply that by whatever value was put on the cost of an hour – without any real consideration either of the induced traffic and resulting congestion, and therefore lost time savings, or some of the wider multi-criteria analysis. We have known this for four decades but have we been really good at applying that sort of multi-criteria analysis in project appraisals? It is improving but one of the cornerstones why we have got into a relative cul-de-sac is that we were very narrow in our assessment of what the benefits are.

I was at a planning conference some years ago at which Fáilte Ireland was presenting. It said if one builds towns and town centres in places for the people who live there to make it nice for them, then one develops places that people want to come and visit. We often see that when we go on holidays to Europe where we think it is great when we are in a town centre with car-free zones and business is booming. We could have those things.

I am almost out of time. The school bus system was spoken about earlier. It is under the Department of Education, given that it is a school bus system. Would there be of benefit to bring it into the Department of Transport? It is probably one of the largest transport operations that is not under the Department of Transport. It could be less restrictive, too. People living 2.5 km from the school should not be excluded from the school bus system. Generally, it is another car on the road for that kind of distance. There should be flexibility where someone may not be going to the nearest school. So what? If someone is going to the school they want to attend, there should be a bus system going. Does the Minister see opportunity to expand the school bus system and bring those benefits? Should it be the Department of Transport which leads on that?

I will flip the first point on great places that people want to visit and turn it the other way. I always argue this about greenways and active travel systems because people argue that greenways are for tourists or leisure and I say no, greenways are for locals. They are for getting to school, the shop or the pub at night. If you do that, tourists will come because they want to meet local people and be part of a community and have a sense of connection. Our tourism, and I was involved in it, is about the welcome and not about creating a kind of Disneyland experience.

It has to be real. I agree with the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach that if places are nicer to visit, they tend to be better but you create it for local people and then you make somewhere that is nicer to visit.

With regard to the school bus system, as I said, we have just come out of a process with the Department of Education on reviewing it. The issue about whether it should be in the Department of Education or the Department of Transport might be what could be called a manifesto issue at this stage. We are all going to set out our views on that in the context of programme for Government manifestos. I would be very surprised if the Green Party manifesto did not say that it should be in the Department of Transport but it is not going to change in the lifetime of this Government. It is up to the next government as to whether that should happen.

I would be supportive of it going into the Department of Transport. It has that expertise. Then there is one issue in that school bus system, and it is probably a legacy issue. Once people over 70 years of age, there is an issue on driving the school buses. That might be a Bus Éireann contractual requirement.

Without putting anybody on the spot, I am a firm believer in research and evidence to direct how we do things. If the evidence suggests that is not a good idea, I would accept that but if the evidence suggests it is worth exploring, that is something we should look at as well.

My time slot is up now, and I am going to welcome the real Chair of the committee, Senator Horkan, who is going to take over.

I thank Deputy Matthews. I would not like the rumour to go out that I am the real Chair. I may have been the Acting Chair for a year and a half but I am not the real Chair. I am just the Vice Chair by the consent of the committee. I apologise for being late; I had a previous engagement that I had attend. Of all the times I was not here for the start, I am very sorry that it was when the Minister was here. It is not a slight against him because I know him probably longer than a lot of people in this room as being my local TD for many a year. When I was a councillor, he was the TD for the same area and I pay tribute to him for all he has done in public life. I am sure we will see each other many times into the future. I used to hate, when I was not in the Chair, when people would come in late and repeat all the things everyone else has said. I am going to try not to do that.

I am around long enough to remember the Stillorgan QBC going through Morehampton Road and Donnybrook village, and the absolute horror among the good people of south Dublin imagining that road space was going to be taken away from their quite often rather large vehicles. It happened, and it happened in 1999, during my first local election campaign. It worked really well and all of a sudden people in Foxrock, Stillorgan, Cabinteely, Mount Merrion and Leopardstown were all getting the bus into work because it was much faster than the car. I am looking at the Dublin traffic plan now and thinking, "Here we are all over again". Sometimes you need to be that little bit brave.

One of the Minister's predecessors was the former Deputy Séamus Brennan, who the Minister would have known well, and I would have known very well. In fact, he is probably the reason I was ever in politics. He asked me to run the first time when he was Minister for Transport. He introduced penalty points, and he said there was a lot of people saying they thought he was being very brave, courageous or possibly stupid. However, he said let us just do three issues, and then it worked. I think the Dublin traffic plan has to be experimented with and tried, and people will probably go, "Oh wow, it is working really well and not causing half the problems we thought it would". I would like to get the Minister's thoughts on that with regard to the level of bravery, courage or possible stupidity that is needed to make the jump. Many of those jumps have worked.

I remember being at the first one with the Leas-Chathaoirleach - the first carriage. Séamus Brennan deserves great credit, and as I said on Sunday, the fact that he is lying in rest looking out over the Dundrum Luas station is very appropriate. He probably picked that site. He recognised it as one of the projects he was most proud of.

The Leas-Chathaoirleach is right. We need to be courageous and make decisions. I said earlier on that we need to be the same in Dublin city. It is vital. The city centre needs a lift. Because there are fewer people going into work post Covid, there is less retail footfall. There is less business, and we need to bring business back, counter the draw on our city out to the orbital motorway, and make Dublin city a really attractive living place, which we can do. I am very hopeful that will proceed in August. One of the benefits of it is that it is not expensive. We are talking about traffic signs here, mainly, and about lines of paint on the road, not big civil works. Even if we did it and it did not work, to reverse it in or two or three years or whatever period would not be a difficult thing to do. This can be done quickly, at relatively low cost and to my mind, to the huge benefit of the city.

I want to slightly widen it out. I was just thinking as the Leas-Chathaoirleach mentioned the Stillorgan bus corridor. He is right; I was involved in that as well and I recall the phenomenal increase in bus traffic, which was beyond what everyone expected. I look at that now, and I hope we do deliver the BusConnects project. That route going from UCD and Blackrock down to Nutley Avenue is going to be important. I will bring the Leas-Chathaoirleach in from there. If he looks at Donnybrook - and I am going into my own area rather than his-----

Yes. I am being very local but it is just to give an example. What is Donnybrook? Is Donnybrook a distributor road into the city or is it the centre for a community? There are certain examples coming out to me as I see it developing now, which give me hope that it could be a sense of community. Take one very local example. Let us go down to the bottom of Eglinton Road and look at that complex junction at Donnybrook church and the Dublin Bus garage. That development at the bottom of Eglinton Road is a really attractive development. I am sure there was lots of opposition to it; it is 11 storeys high but it actually enhances the sense of place. Similarly, across the road from it, we have got the greenway going along the River Dodder by Herbert Park. However, that greenway comes to an abrupt halt at that bridge and there is no really effective way across. If we are going to continue the greenway along the river, we need to rethink that very junction.

As part of that we could look at both RTÉ and the Dublin Bus garage, which are both on State land. As I said earlier, with respect to our planning system, how long have we been waiting for the site in RTÉ to be developed, which would hugely benefit Donnybrook, and give it a sense of a living community? Similarly, with regard to Dublin Bus, is it not beyond the bounds of our possibility, even though they are listed buildings as we electrify the buses there so they will be cleaner and quieter, that we could look to develop some of that site? We could start to make that Donnybrook crossroads a living place rather than what it is at the moment and has been for several decades, which is a motorway into the city. That does not work because it is congested.

Taking that as an example, I would love us to even pick up on what we did with the bus corridor there, to go further again, and really make Donnybrook, which is just one example, a village that is a centre of community life. The question is: is it a corridor or a community? Increasingly, we should be thinking of them as communities and making sure we have the scale, quality and speed of public transport so people can still get in and out, which we need to do. That is not impossible when you invest in buses. The biggest risk with those arguing against the Dublin city centre traffic management plans is that it cripples the bus network for the entire city. All our buses would end up stuck in the centre of the city trying to get through. The whole city is impacted by that, and that is why we need to put in the measures quickly and the money we are putting into BusConnects so that every corridor starts to be able to switch to public transport and become better places to live in.

We are looking at Dublin as a city, and the thing people want most is a reliable transport system. The reliability is more important than frequency. Frequency is obviously brilliant because if a service goes missing, the next one comes along and if people know it is coming every 15 minutes and guaranteed to get them in by a certain journey time, they buy into that. People have bought into the Luas. The Minister saw the figures, and we know the figures. It has sucked in people from 15- to 20-minute walks away because they will walk that far to get to the Luas. They know they do not have to worry about the frequency or the journey time once they get there.

The challenge is the congestion on many of the routes. The 11 route is not a reliable route at any level of traffic. It is fine at 11.30 p.m. It does not get passengers because it gets too congested. There are too many of those routes and not enough BusConnects-type routes, and many of our routes will never work that way. In the longer term, where does the Minister see demand management working in the sense of encouraging people to take the train, for example, because the fare is so much cheaper than driving to Cork, Limerick, Sligo or Galway? We could also allow people to more easily bring bikes on trains. It is possible but not easy. In other countries, people can literally hang their bikes up in the carriage and keep an eye on it. They do not have to worry about whether there will be space for it at the end of the train. The push factors out of the car are one thing and the pull factors onto public transport are the other. What else does the Minister think we can do to incentivise people to get out of their cars and onto public transport?

I could give a very long answer, but two things come to mind. We need to go back to the future. If we look at a map of Dublin in the 1910s or 1920s, we can see it probably had the most extensive public transport network of any city in the world. It was rail-based by and large, specifically trams. The 11 was a tram, as were the 15 and 14. We all know this. We have shown we can do it. For a city with a very small population, which back than was probably only 300,000 or 400,000, it was able to function with a public transport-based system.

Practically none. Thus, it is not impossible for us to recreate that Dublin and it would be a better Dublin.

The second point goes back to something I was saying earlier. It sounds slightly bizarre, but what would make Dublin work is Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick also working, because we have massive investment coming to Dublin, but if all the development continues to be in Dublin then the city will always be under pressure and not able to cope. It suits Dublin if we build metropolitan rail in Cork. It suits Dublin when we do metropolitan rail in Limerick. Dublin needs BusConnects in Galway. Dublin needs BusConnects in Waterford. They are not funded at the moment. Some of the projects are, but it is going to be a real challenge. Bizarrely for Dublin, we need the heavy lifting to be done by some of the other cities when it comes to an expanding population. While we need to do stuff in Dublin, we need to do stuff in those other cities too. If we take Galway, we have a pathfinder project called Cross-City Link that goes from near the hospital out by the university, through the centre and out the other side onto the Dublin road. It has been in planning for about two years now. That is like the Dublin city centre traffic management plan. There is a small amount of compulsory purchase involved, but by and large it is signage and it could be done in six months. That project is probably also important for Dublin so Galway gives a signal that it is going to go towards a modern transport system rather than everyone driving through everywhere. Strangely for Dublin, that Cross-City Link project in Galway is an example we need to get over the line because if it all happens in Dublin then the city will never be able to cope.

I am conscious of time. Deputy O'Connor wants to come in and I will bring him in shortly. What else can TDs and Senators do as public representatives in our communities by way of encouragement and promotion of this? I cycle in most days, including this morning. I get in much faster than I would ever have done in a car. A lot of people may not have realised how easy it is in many places to make that jump to using the bike to get the local shops, school or work. It will not work in many places in rural Ireland where people live further out, but for many people that is the opportunity. What else can we do as public representatives to encourage the move away from the private car? Every car that comes off the road makes it easier for those who need their cars, because if I am on my bike instead, I am not taking up space. If half the population can cycle, walk or use active travel, it makes the roads much better for those who still need their cars.

To go back to what I was saying earlier, this must come from the bottom up at local level. We cannot supplant local government in making these decisions. The Leas-Chathaoirleach's area of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is an example. We happened to have a meeting last week with some of our active travel teams and we were looking at the pathfinder projects. The likes of the decision in Dún Laoghaire to proceed with the Living Streets project was absolutely critical. It was a hard decision. Local government involves some of the hardest decisions. The Leas-Chathaoirleach knows as he has been there. When you have to put up your hand and vote for something and the public gallery behind you does not want you to, it is much harder than in the Seanad or the Dáil where there is just a button and no constituents behind you. However, what I was hearing from our active travel teams is Dún Laoghaire is moving ahead of the pack and starting to make some decisions which are hard but will, I hope, lead to real benefit and progress. I suggest the Leas-Chathaoirleach work with his party colleagues at a local level because they have the ultimate responsibility and it is working. It is starting to happen. It has taken a few years.

The constituency where I am and which the Minister used to represent, the old Dublin South, is absolutely transformed. There were no QBCs 25 years ago, there was no Luas and even no M50. It is absolutely transformed. We take everything for granted, but it used to take an hour to get from Goatstown to Knocklyon and it does not now.

I am interested in getting the Leas-Chathaoirleach's sense of it. I am fixated. I am sad, in the sense every time an S2, S4 or S6 goes by I am counting the number of passengers on board, which initially is low. We expect that, but I anticipate it will grow because, as the Leas-Chathaoirleach said, it is transformative. There was never the quality. It used to be that passengers would go on the 17 and see the world and it was on a lunar timetable, but now those S2, S4 and S6 buses are shooting up and down every ten minutes. That is the biggest transformation I have seen in our area.

We had Kenny Jacobs in here last week. We will not go into the airport for now, but he was saying in 2002 or something 5% of people went to the airport by public transport and it is now 34%. I recall being on the Aircoach when it was empty 20 and 25 years ago and now I will struggle to get a seat on some its services as they are so full. People are making that jump to public transport because it works. It is possibly because the carparks are expensive as well, but public transport is working. We all need to have reliable services and if the services are reliable we will all use them. I thank the Minister for his contribution today, but also for the last however many years it is at this stage. I hope we will see him next week, next month and for a good while yet.

I will give Deputy O'Connor some time now.

I thank the Chairperson. I thank the Minister for his contribution to public life. The public at home in my constituency and indeed those who have been watching know we have had a few run-ins over issues we disagree on, but beyond that as a person, he has been very good to work with. He has been highly respectful in any engagements we have had. Any meeting I have ever asked him for he has facilitated. I would actually argue he has treated me better than some of my colleagues and-----

-----I am conscious of that and want to thank him for it. It is a sign of a decent human being and someone who is committed to public service. Our views on how to run the country and get things functioning from a transport perspective may not always be the same, but I appreciate all the Minister has done and the impact he has made. I wish him and his family well in the future and have no doubt he will not be withdrawing from public life entirely.

I move to a public transport issue in my constituency. The Minister may know from his visits to east Cork and his familiarity with the area that we have exciting plans with the CMATS. We have often discussed what is happening Midleton to Mallow and Cobh around the connectivity that has been done. It is enormously positive work. There is a huge draw in the conversation about how people feel this could be improved upon is the lack of a rail connection to Youghal. Youghal is my home town. It is a town that has had very significant economic difficulties. People locally feel abandoned by government policy, though we are seeing the roll-out of the greenway there at present. As one of the Minister’s final acts in the position, could he look at the potential for feasibility studies to be completed on what it would take to connect Youghal back up to the Midleton rail line. There is an existing rail line in the ownership of Irish Rail. That was a stipulation when the agreement was down with Cork County Council for the current greenway. I want to get an insight into whether some money could be put aside in the forthcoming budget to analyse what the cost of the reintroduction of the Youghal to Midleton rail line would be.

Some of the estimates I have heard are approximately a quarter of a billion euro but we will never know until a professional study is done. The reason I ask the Minister this is that he knows that we have very significant traffic locally. I have worked with the Minister to try to get the N25 upgraded. These works are at an advanced stage in the hope that a design consultant will be appointed in the autumn of this year.

I have to respect what my constituents want and the desire to see the return of the rail line to Youghal is enormously important to people in the town. It is enormously important to people who live in the vicinity of the town, whether in Castlemartyr, Killeagh, Mogeely or other locations that are dotted along the rail line further up towards Midleton. I seek an insight from the Minister. Could the Minister see if funding could be provided only to give a costing on what it would take and what would involved in that project?

I thank Deputy O'Connor for his kind words at the start. Sometimes it feels like you are at your own funeral when you hear nice, kind words said about you. It is pleasant and very much appreciated.

I understand the case the Deputy is making for an extension of the rail line to Youghal. Youghal is a spectacular beautiful town but which, maybe, has seen better days. It needs to get back on the up and it will and, in many ways, is. The reality is, and I ask Mr. Ebrill to correct me if I am wrong, the extension to Youghal is not in the strategic rail review. I was asked earlier on, for example, about an extension of a rail link to Shannon. It is merely one example of the huge number of projects which are in the review. To be honest, being about to complete the rail review, up North as well as South, I do not believe that will be amended. There are other examples where people are looking for rail lines to be reopened or built. Collooney to Claremorris is another example. I would say the same to them as to Deputy O'Connor. Particularly because it is an all-island process but also because it has been two-and-a-half years in the doing, I do not see the review being revised at this stage. In the absence of the extension to Youghal being either in that or in the NDP, I cannot imagine the costings would be that different to what the Deputy suggested. It is expensive to reintroduce a rail line even where one has got in effect an existing way leave with the building of the greenway. I would hate to give a false promise to the people of Youghal that that is immediately deliverable. It is deliverable in a longer-term timeframe because, as I said, the greenway is there. If a future Government decides that we would have to look at it and reintroduce it, it would be easier than if that greenway was not built. However, our first priority should be to make that greenway work.

Youghal has always benefited from being a significant tourist town and I am very interested in terms of how can we make that work. As it happens, and not in any way undermining the case the Deputy is making for the bigger investment, I had a meeting this week with the pathfinder officials who are charged with delivering a greenway from Dungarvan to Youghal, because that is one of the pathway projects I had a particular interest in. I would be interested to hear the Deputy's view on this. Not to undermine the argument the Deputy makes for a rail line, I argued for them that we should be looking at something spectacular into Youghal at the point of the ferry crossing from the Ardmore side in Waterford across to the town. In my mind, it would be a transformative project for the town in the same way that the reopening of the greenway to Dungarvan, because of the likes of the aqueduct, is so special. We need something special coming into Youghal to boost tourism. I have asked the officials to go away and look at that project because there would be an issue as to whether one could get to some of the yachts or other boats that go up as far as the existing bridge closer to Lismore and they will come back to me with specific proposals on that, which I was particularly interested in.

I would love to have the financing and the mechanisms to extend rail lines everywhere but, in truth, because of the scale of the commitments, Cork metropolitan rail alone, with the money we need to invest in Midleton, in Carrigtwohill, in Glantane and in the new stations coming around towards Cobh, will cost in the order of €1 billion.

Over €1 billion. To be honest, we need to get that project over the line. If we get that over the line and then one starts running ten-minute services from places such as Cobh and Midleton, perhaps people will come back and say we have to extend to Youghal. I would be the first to cheer it on but I cannot give a false promise on it today.

That is okay. When I say, "That is okay," I understand that is the Minister's current response and we will discuss it further.

I will make one final point. It is an overall view of Government policy in general. I have seen this done successfully in other countries I have visited. In Ireland, when you have a town or an area that is heavily neglected through long-term policy failures, the Government as a whole fails to recognise that with a lot more careful thought and proactive interaction between local authorities and different Government agencies and Departments, such as IDA Ireland, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, the NTA, the Departments of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Transport and, obviously, public expenditure, there needs to be an authority created in Ireland in some shape or fashion that can go into towns that are in not-good condition that desperately need very substantial investment to try to turn their fortunes around, whether by bringing in an employer, building infrastructure that is required or looking at how one improves education in those areas. It is not only in towns like Youghal. It is in many parts of Dublin city. It is in parts all over the west of Ireland where there are towns that are suffering from deprivation and dereliction. It really annoys me.

The reason I feel obliged to say that to the Minister is that he has one of the privileged positions of the top three most powerful politicians in Cabinet leading one of the Government parties in the three-party arrangement that we have in government at present. It would be remiss of me not to say it to the Minister. This is something that merits discussion at Cabinet because these are the types of policies that leave legacies behind in Governments where there is a proactive approach taken. The policies that we have at present around rural regeneration are not hitting where they need to do.

What really messes it up in rural Ireland is the fact that the population cut-off for accessing the funds that are currently coming out from local government are restrictive. It cuts out many of these towns that have populations of 3,500 up to 10,000. They need to be of a larger scale in order to access the urban regeneration funding and some of them are too big to get access to rural regeneration. In the forthcoming budget, as a final act, this is something that could make a positive proactive difference to so many towns such as Youghal around the country.

I appreciate what the Deputy is saying. I have always reflected on this in regard to taking Cork county as an example. What the Deputy says is true. Some towns are flying and some towns less so. I would argue that Cork county has been highly progressive. It had a good architect, a good planning regime and enhanced and promoted its towns, not only Cork city. Much of that was about the public realm.

I would always cite as an example, if I have given examples around the country of towns that are booming and why, the likes of Clonakilty. We grew up with, "Clonakilty, God help us", as the saying. It was a town that probably suffered more than many in history. In recent decades, for a variety of different reasons, partly because they took some of the through traffic out of the main street as they had even a little town bypass, they enhanced and invested in the main street in a way that really made it attractive. As a result of that and other reasons, there are over 1,000 people working in the industrial estate there, it has fantastic shopping, and it is a fantastic attractive location to go and live in as well as work. One could pick other examples. I think of Skibbereen, Bantry increasingly and Midleton itself. These are towns that are really on the rise, it seems to me.

The question we have to ask is, how do we extend that to other towns? I would agree with the Deputy. Town centre first should be centre-stage and key. It is not only about the big towns. It is that 5,000 to 10,000 population town category. Going back to what I said about Youghal, that is why I mentioned that iconic investment on the eastern side of the town. Because it is such a beautiful town, sometimes, if you put in something special, things start to move in return. It is not that hugely expensive. That might cost €20 million or €30 million, not €200 million or €300 million, but it could have a similar effect to some of the measures that we saw in Clonakilty that saw it taking off.

I will be brief because I know we have to finish by 3.30 p.m. We spoke earlier about the Luas and the success it has been. When the Luas was being proposed, there were many detractors who said that it would be chaos for Dublin and that Dublin would be ruined by it. We know it has been a success. Similarly, as regards the DART, which is 40 years old now, there were many detractors at the time. There is an RTÉ Archives video going around at the moment from 1983 or 1984 about the project overrun on the DART. The figure was £48 million and ended up being £130 million or something like that, small money when you think about it now. Can you imagine if we had taken the advice of people at the time who said not to do the DART or the Luas? Can you imagine the absolute chaos of congestion we would have in Dublin now? You need to be brave in these projects. Not only do you need to be brave and say you probably will not get to deliver whatever it is within the five-year or four-year term of your government or within a particular term, but you also need to have that vision and be brave enough to say, "This is where we will put the money and this is what we will do."

What everybody working in this area of large transport infrastructure projects needs is surety as to where we are going with our transport policy. That needs to be backed by surety in funding as well. The agreement in the programme for Government, that 2:1 spend on public transport, provides that confidence for all those project managers and all those leaders of our transport agencies that this is baked in. That needs to continue with the next government and the governments after it. That is critical to transport success in this country.

Similarly, on cycling and walking, there is a video Members will see of some street in Amsterdam back in the sixties and a stand-off going on between the drivers, the cyclists and the walkers.

It could have been the Hague. I thought it was Amsterdam. I do not know. There is a lovely old VW bus in the footage as well. They had those conflicts at the time, but anybody now who goes to any of those cities - Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Utrecht or anywhere like that - sees the cycling infrastructure in place. That takes time to deliver and takes people to be brave and say, "This is what we will do, this is how we will deliver it, and it might take five, ten or 15 years, but this is what we will end up with." The next government and the government after it need to stick firmly to this commitment. We see in other sectors that where we chop and change direction, it provides no surety for anybody and it is just a recipe for disaster and further congestion.

The DART expansion is another one. There is 50 km of electrified rail out there. DART+ will bring that to 150 km, with carriages on order. There are 600 carriages in that framework. About 180 of them are being constructed and going to delivery at the moment. There is the battery electric service as well. That will go to Drogheda first, which is right. It is planned. It has been planned for quite some time. It is well advanced. Those carriages will start arriving in the next year to year and a half. They will go into test, commission and service. Similarly, the other end of that project is the DART extension to Wicklow town. That will take another three years. That may be optimistic but I think it is deliverable. That is what we need to stick to and that is the messaging that needs to be clear out there. We need consistency in this. We cannot chop and change. That is the most important message for anybody in dealing with public transport, congestion and the life this will bring back to our towns and villages.

I will be brief because I am conscious of the time. I absolutely agree with the Deputy. The next government is a manifesto issue, as we talked about earlier. The 10% commitment to active travel is critical and key because we have now set up the systems which are coming through with good-quality designs. We need to pick the ones that can be deliverable and support the councils that are willing to take the hard decisions and go ahead. There has to be that budget to back them. We are really starting to see the possibilities here. Failing to keep that up would be a terrible missed opportunity. Similarly, the 2:1 ratio in the remaining budget towards public transport versus roads is not anti-roads. As I said, for safety and a whole range of other reasons, we need to spend, but we have so many public transport projects coming. We have the €1 billion a year. We know we need to invest to deliver on the strategic rail review. If you do not have that scale of funding, you are basically saying we are going down the path of a car-dominated system. That will result only in gridlock. It will be very expensive in other ways. That is a critical decision.

On battery electric trains, the Deputy is right. As an example, I will be very local now in his case. I believe that the extension to Wicklow of the DART system makes real sense. I go back to what I said earlier about the national investment framework for transport in Ireland, NIFTI. We are using an existing line. Those battery electric trains mean that we do not have to electrify the full system. We can make that extension, using the existing assets really well. It is, by my understanding, a relatively low-cost installation of power connection at Wicklow station. The biggest issue is the grid. My understanding is that Wicklow station is very well placed to enhance the grid and to charge the batteries when the train is there. We could look at the option some have mentioned of switching over from Wexford services there to enhance and improve connectivity. That is a really good example.

To go back to one of the main points I am making, we also need to send some of the battery electric trains down to Cork. It is really important for Cork metropolitan rail that when we open up new stations in the likes of Blackpool, Monard, Blarney, Tivoli and so on, the service should be world-class and first placed to put the best trains in as a signal of intent for Cork, as well as Dublin.

I will see if I can squeeze in Senator Dolan for about a minute in about two minutes' time. I am conscious that the Minister needs to be gone by 3.30 p.m.

As regards the examples all around where I live, Minister, and not too far from where you live, if you build it, they will come. If you put in the services, it will work. The figures for the 46A, I think, and now, by extension, the 145 and 155, which have gone to that route, massively exceeded any level of expectation.

As regards the DART or the Luas, people are willing to walk 15 or 20 minutes to get to a Luas, knowing that it is a reliable service that will be there frequently, efficiently and time after time and will get them to their destination with a journey time that is accurate and reliable.

A lot of the cycle lanes that have been put in have meant that people who would feel more vulnerable feel less vulnerable. All of that is very positive, but we also need a mindset shift whereby people do not automatically walk out the front door, jump into the car and go wherever they are going, only to get to the end of the road and discover that everyone else has done the same and that, actually, they could make a lot of their journey times quicker. I know that as somebody who did not always cycle but has cycled probably for the past ten or 15 years. Your journey time, end to end, on a bike is far shorter because you are not trying to get out of traffic or negotiating endless traffic jams and junctions and congestion. You try to park the car and you are not sure where you will park it, and then you have to walk back from wherever you have parked it. A bike you can pretty much cycle - I will not say into the building but as close to the building as makes no difference in many cases. That is the mind shift we need. We have to get people thinking that the journey to the bank, to the post office, to the pharmacist or to school is as quick, if not quicker, in an urban setting.

The planning part of this is really important. The Minister mentioned, the 11-storey block, which I managed to see from Nutley last Thursday. I said, "Oh!" I had never seen it before because it was not there before from a particular angle. It is certainly a landmark building. Many people will be living there, and many of them genuinely will not need a car. They are on the best bus route in the country and in an area where they could cycle within ten or 12 minutes into the city centre or to lots of other places, such as Sandyford, UCD, St. Vincent's hospital and RTÉ. There are lots of trip generators very close by.

It is not about being anti-car. We all know that if you live in rural Connemara, rural Ballinasloe or various other places, a car is pretty much a necessity. A great many people, however, do not live in those areas, and there will be a great many more people not living in those areas. We were talking about sites that were waiting to be unlocked in places such as RTÉ and Donnybrook bus garage, very close to where the Minister and I live. We have seen the Blake's site and the bowling alley site in Stillorgan village. All of a sudden, they are being transformed. The bowling alley site has I do not know how many apartments but it is a lot. I was on the council when we voted to allow residential units into Sandyford. It was a concept that was unheard of. There are now thousands of people living and working there with no journey times to go into work.

Our planning system, therefore, has a big part to play in helping us reduce emissions as well. I am not sure if you need to say anything to that, Minister, but it is important that all of us, at local authority level and national level, appreciate that planning and building communities that are sustainable without having to use the car for every journey is better. I remember canvassing in by-elections in Meath. There was one house to the acre and enormous distances from one house to the other. There were housing estates of 11 houses on an acre each. Then they wonder why there is no bus service. There is no bus service because there are no people, or not enough people to justify any kind of a bus service or a health system or anything else because the density is so low.

There is a trade-off. It is nice to be in a remote area sometimes but it does not make delivery of services any more efficient. Does the Minister have any thoughts on that?

I thank the Minister for providing more than €400 million for safety on the Ballaghaderreen to Scramogue road in County Roscommon. This was an extremely dangerous road on which lives were lost. I acknowledge the attention given to this matter. We also have a brand-new Local Link service from Castlerea to Mountbellew and Ballinasloe. I was in Galway last week and saw the new X51 service that goes from Galway to Shannon Airport. I ask that the Department give attention to the continuation of the wonderful new cycleway. The bridge across the Shannon is stunning. The process has gone thorough the tendering and re-tendering processes, which is a challenge. This wonderful, new coast-to-coast high-spec cycleway is one of the key projects that I want to see being delivered in Galway.

The second issue I raise is regional connectivity between towns. At the event in Galway I mentioned, one of the officials from the Expressway bus service took the train from Dublin to Galway because they could not take a bus. Then they arrived and were there for the launch of the new X51 service. Is there an opportunity to consider this in the Connecting Ireland rural mobility plan for route 23? Is there a way to review this because we no longer have Aircoach servicing the Dublin to Galway route. Is it possible to review route 20, which connects the towns?

It is wonderful that we have seven new train services from Galway to Dublin. It will mean that people can travel to work in Portiuncula University Hospital and get to work in Galway. There are now later services at 7.30 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. from Dublin, which will be fantastic for many public representatives, never mind the people working in Dublin. Heuston Station is jammed a lot of the time. I used the service over the last two or three weeks. The number of people using it is incredible. Some 40 additional carriages have been added to the trains, which is phenomenal. Not every town has a train station in the middle of the town, allowing for easy access. I ask that there be a review of the 20 route, in the context of the Connecting Ireland rural mobility plan, which is coming to the end of its five-year period.

I do not have the details of the 20 service but I will ask my officials to look at the matter and come back to the Senator directly about the possibilities. I agree in general with the points the Senator has made so I want to make a couple of points. The spectacular, new bridge in Athlone across the Shannon came to my attention recently.

Yes, the electric buses are another example. We are looking at pathfinder projects of real benefit, with a huge increase in patronage at very low cost, by anyone's measure. When infrastructure is put in place it provides an opportunity to rethink the town. I have a slight concern regarding Athlone that maybe the benefit of the bridge is not being availed of because to a certain extent, other difficult decisions were not made about how the town traffic system works. It was an opportunity, particularly for the west bank, to be really transformative. I will be upfront and honest on this. I do not think the council swung in behind the idea of rethinking how the town works. I do not want to single out any one council in this regard. I do not know if the Senator is familiar with Mullingar but I was there recently. There is a new traffic-light management system and I think there are questions about whether it has improved pedestrian safety or created a real sense of space. I have a sense that sometimes the devil is in the detail and it is difficult to see things and engineer them, and it is difficult politically. Coming away from both Athlone and Mullingar, I felt that there was great progress being made but so much more could be done.

Westmeath and Roscommon are the two county councils for Athlone. The regional spatial strategy coming from the Western Development Commission and also from the East Midlands Development Commission has nominated Athlone as a growth town. The population is predicted to grow to 30,000 by 2030, which is only a few years away. We are looking at a train station and a bus station.

I take the Minister's point about smart planning. I look at this and I see the Citylink bus that drops people 20 minutes outside Athlone, as opposed to coming in to the town to a purpose-built bus station. I am not sure of any buses that go west in Athlone from the bus station. I think one bus goes to Mayo but there is none coming west of Athlone. I know that there is a wonderful new service to Dundalk but the challenge I have is that Portiuncla University Hospital in Ballinasloe is the main hospital for the town. I have spoken to the Minister about this many times. I believe the cycleway will come.

I have seen the regeneration of the west bank of Athlone and the beautiful new restaurants there. I see it on sunny evenings, when people are sitting out. I see the wonderful waterways around the Shannon that we are using, in Shannonbridge. There were tours and cruise boats heading from Ballinasloe along the River Suck in to Shannonbridge, connecting with the River Shannon. I have buddies who have renovated a barge and are off doing a trip in it now, travelling along the canals and benefiting from the beauty that we have in Ireland on our waterways. Towns like Athlone and Ballinasloe live on the water's edge and we really can see the connectivity between public transport and our waterways and cycleways coming together in those key towns, which is just phenomenal. There is a lot more to do but we have travelled a long way and I am passionate about seeing how much more we can do, particularly around things like the cycleway, local buses, transport and supporting employment and getting people to live in the west. I am focused on the other side of the Shannon but Athlone is a crucial town for us for employment.

I will have to leave soon. I would add Loughrea to the list of the Senator's water towns. To go back to what I said earlier about what the street is for, when I was growing up, Loughrea was on the way to Galway. We drove through the town and it was just a matter of getting through the traffic jam-----