Dr. Lorraine D'Arcy:

On the question about accessibility, this is not about preventing everyone from driving into urban centres. It is about ensuring that those who need to drive into urban centres can do so in the most efficient way possible, while also providing anyone who does not need to drive with full support to walk, cycle or use whatever mode of travel they may choose which is the most efficient for them.

It is not about stopping people; it is about empowering people.

We also know there are quite a number of people with disabilities who cannot drive and, therefore, require a caregiver to bring them places. That, in turn, puts an additional burden on the carer. Recent work done by one of our students found that to access these carers and people with disabilities to interview them around public transport interchanges, it was so hard to get them primarily because they are so burdened by all the stresses they have. They do not necessarily engage in public consultation. We need to think more creatively about how we get real and valuable information from them. One of the things we have done is create a walkability app, with an international consortium, that we hope to get up and running. The Walk21 conference that we will be hosting this year is being co-funded by the Department of Health, the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, and the Department of Transport. It is an interdisciplinary conversation about how we can better learn from each other and collect these metrics, such as air quality, physical activity and the delay in dementia, for example, if one lives in a more walkable area, and how we can incorporate that into the justification for our projects and funding.