Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank both groups for their opening statements, which I read last night and listened to now. The 90-page report, Travelling in a Woman’s Shoes, is a very sombre report in terms of anyone interested in decarbonisation or trying to get people into public transport or active travel. It shows how far, if you will pardon the pun, a journey we have to go on in terms of getting people from where they are to where planners and others, such as climate activists, would like us to be, and probably where many people themselves would like to be. They would like to be able to use active travel better. Unfortunately, today is not the best example of a day one might try to do it. There is an enormous challenge in moving away from the private car for the everyday short journey, but we need to have as few reasons to not choose public transport as is possible and to have as many reasons one would use public transport, including factors such as reliability of service and frequency. I believe reliability is more important than frequency. It is very well having frequency of service, but what if that frequency is not reliable? People will put up with a service if they know it is on the hour, but it has to be on the hour. It cannot be every second hour because every second bus goes missing.

We probably should have had this meeting yesterday on International Women's Day with so many women here, but one day out is not too bad. As to this transport committee, and I know every committee is somewhat self-selecting, there are 14 members on this committee and 13 of us are men. I was chair of a transportation strategic policy committee in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and a water and waste strategic policy committee that tended to have many men councillors on them. One found that the arts committee, the library committee, the cultural committee, the housing committee had many more women councillors. I believe there were 21 men and 19 women councillors in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, so we were not short of women. It was just that, for whatever reason, men ended up doing heavy engineering and transport, and women chose other committees rather than the transport sector. I totally get it. What has been said resonates with me; there is an absence. It is not that everything is different. Men and women have many ideas in common but if 85% or 90% of the people in room are men, they will not see everything from a woman's perspective, no matter how many reports we read. I have read the 90-page report. I speed-read through it, but I picked up on much of its content and it is very sobering. I congratulate TII. I always think of the TII as being the National Roads Authority, but obviously the Rail Procurement Agency, the metro and the Luas and so on, come within that. I congratulate TII on the fact that it is looking at how women travel generally but particularly in public transport. I also support what it is doing in terms of cycling. I know there was a recent report about girls travelling to school and the uniform is a barrier. Wearing skirts is not the easiest way to cycle compared to being able to wear trousers. All this research is very valuable and I commend the TII on doing it.

If witnesses of both groups became the Minister for Transport tomorrow morning, what would be the first three or four things they would do to try to improve the situation? Deputy Crowe referred to car parking, which I will not focus too much to because I am trying to stick to travelling in terms of public transport and cycling. What would the witnesses do if they became the Minister of Transport tomorrow morning? Obviously, security, lighting and passive surveillance are a part of it, but I am here to listen to the experts rather than give them a long speech.