Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his opening statement. I want to focus in the initial round of questions on the area of active travel and public transport, an area in which the Minister is keenly interested. As a starting point, I will deal with the unmet demand that exists. My sense is that people are ready to make the switch but the facilities are not yet in place. Regarding the scale of ambition on the move to active travel, I heard the Minister in the past 24 hours draw comparisons between here and Copenhagen and the moves that were made there some decades ago. Currently, 49% of journeys in Copenhagen are done by bicycle. The ambition in the greater Dublin area transport strategy, published less a week ago, is that 11.5% of journeys will be made by bicycle by 2042.

School bus transport it is oversubscribed every year. The scale of ambition from Bus Éireann is that we would have a 20% increase by 2030. If we met the existing demand, fewer than 1,000 additional children would travel by school bus transport a year. That is current policy. Another example is the safe routes to school programme, which the Opposition supports. However, it is greatly oversubscribed. It provided for 170 schools this year. Those projects will take a number of years to implement. However, 931 schools subscribed for the programme. That shows schools are crying out for the type of investment to support change that completely aligns with the ambition but the supports needed are not being provided. That is the essence of my question. There seems to be a contradiction with respect to the policy, the rhetoric, for want of a better term, between what has been put down in black and white on paper and the funding and operationalising of that. I raise that as a concern from my position in opposition of supporting the intent but I question the alignment of policy and the provision of funding to deliver on it, in other words, the scale of investment.

I wish to pick up with the Minister on the achievement of what is in the NDP. An amendment to our roads legislation appears to deal with delivering transport change in communities. That can be seen with BusConnects and the reallocation of road space. What is the thinking behind that amending legislation? Is it to deliver on BusConnects or cycling infrastructure? It appears to be a crude tool, which will be controversial. Is it sufficient or does the Minister consider any further measure is necessary to deliver on the policy objective in that respect? If time permits, I may come back in later.