Ms Louise Williams:

We will need to ensure that we are tracking all of the injuries because we know from the emergency calls we are are getting, unfortunately, that people are sometimes uncertain about this.

On health and assessing the impact of missing out on cycling as raised by Senator Higgins, the World Health Organisation, WHO, estimates that the lack of physical activity is linked to about 3 million deaths globally. I do not have specific figures for Ireland because of the complexity of tracking but there is no doubt that cycling has many physical benefits for the individual together with his or her well-being. As somebody who cycles regularly there is a lot of well-being that I can benefit from. The more people who cycle, the less congestion we will have. We are all interconnected on the roads and we are all trying to get away from that hostility between road users.

I will mention briefly schools, teenage girls and cycling. Green Schools have done some very interesting research into this that the committee may have seen. The name of the campaign is #andshecycles. It carried out focus groups with teenage girls. This is a very important aspect of looking at mobility in our country and asking what people are saying and experiencing by listening to the people who are directly affected.

Two main issues rose from teenage girls. One was that cycling was not cool. I do not think anybody around this room will be able to address that because we are not cool. The second thing mentioned by teenage girls is of absolute concern to all of us, which is verbal harassment by boys and men. There is a targeting of teenage girls which is part of this whole hostility and context within which quite an amount of harassment, violence and disputes are occurring. We have the responsibility to create an environment where teenage girls feel comfortable cycling and can experience that independence. Women and cycling have always been interconnected, with this idea of emancipation embodied by the suffragettes who took to their bikes. Women can really benefit and have the right to benefit from cycling. We should be able to cycle free of harassment. It is of particular concern that teenage girls were feeling the brunt of this and are avoiding cycling. This is a rational choice for a teenage girl.