Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all our guests. I tried to balance two meetings but did so very badly so missed all of the first hour. I apologise to the witnesses, therefore, if what I ask them has been covered already.

As the focus of this session is urban regeneration and I have a particular interest in transport, I would like to hear from the witnesses whether they agree - if they disagree with me, that is fair enough - that transport policies and choices are inextricably linked to urban regeneration or, indeed, the failure of urban regeneration. I hope they will agree with me but I want what I have asked about to come out of this session.

We had a very interesting session of the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action in which we had participation by officials from the Departments of Transport and other Departments. The witnesses present will probably be disappointed to hear that those officials expect an increase in the number of cars on our roads and streets by 2030. Notwithstanding the expected shift to public transport and active travel, according to the Department officials we are still going to have more vehicles in 2030. I believe that that view should challenge all of us. If we are trying to create liveable villages, towns and cities and breathe life into rural Ireland by making villages and towns viable, we are not going to succeed if these places are clogged with cars. Therefore, a discussion on how to use public space is critical and we need to make a lot of noise about how problematic the growth in the number of vehicles would be.

Recently, I was overseas in Rome and saw that quite a lot of the vehicles there are, by necessity, very small and light. You do not see that in other cities. We see a trend of increasing size and weight of vehicles. If we must have cars in urban areas, then insofar as possible they should be as small and as light as possible so that we can make the best use of urban spaces. I am interested in hearing the views of the witnesses on that and I ask them to shed some light on the practice across the world in the area of light vehicle policy.

I would say that Mr. Donovan will agree with me that the best light vehicle is a bike. I think that we need to do a hell of a lot more to make cycling attractive, viable and safe for everybody.

The witnesses have addressed the issue of road space reallocation, which is critical. One of the criticisms of the BusConnects programme is that it does not talk about the reallocation of road space rather then the finding of new space for buses. I think we must move away from that policy. We need to recognise that the car is the lowest in the hierarchy of road users, and rightly so. The car is very energy-inefficient and it is a space-inefficient mode of transport. Every decision we take at a policy level needs to recognise that.

Is the national planning framework fit for purpose? The framework allows for 50% of all new developments to be located outside of urban areas and I think that undermines towns and villages. While I acknowledge that the percentage is a step in the right direction, the framework is up for review in 2024 and it needs to be seriously reviewed if it is to take us to where we need to get.