Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I apologise. I thought they were contributory groups. We have to look historically here. For the past 60 years we have been planning for cars. It is ingrained in everything we tried to do. We are trying to flip that around at the moment. That takes time. It takes time for designers, for decision-makers and for road users to start adapting to that road design. I am concerned there is a predominance of the windscreen view when we design our streets. It is designed from the perspective of the car user. The Road Safety Authority may come back to me that other groups will give the cyclists’ view, the pedestrians’ view or even the shop owners’ view. It is better for local businesses when people are walking around safely in their towns. Many people have to feed into this when it comes to changing our streets. I am not attacking the RSA on this. I appreciate the work the authority does. I am just concerned we will talk about this for a long time and not implement these measures.

I believe An Garda Síochána will join us at some stage and we will have a second meeting on this. It is critical to this. I have a lot of criticism for the force, but I will save it for when representatives of the Garda are before the committee because they are not here at the moment to defend the force. The Garda needs to step up its actions on enforcement, road safety, speeding and other things such as parking on footpaths and in disability bays. The local authorities need to do so as well.

In terms of delivery, in 2015, I monitored streets. I was a fairly newly elected councillor and I was full of enthusiasm.