Ms Rachel Cahill:

I might start and then pass to my colleagues. That is a good perspective and lens to ask us. For me, even acknowledging that transport design is not gender neutral and that women and men have different mobility realities and understanding why that is the case would be key. Acknowledging that and building that awareness and championing it at a senior level and having real leadership and commitment around that fact is key. It might sound a bit woolly and soft, but without that kind of championing and advocacy, we will not get anywhere in terms of designing and delivering sustainable transport modes.

The Senator mentioned the gender balance on this and other committees. For us in TII, we are an engineering organisation so we would have more males, perhaps, than females. It is about looking at education and our young people and children, and what is influencing them. An interesting nugget that came from our report, one that I was very interested in, was the role of families in Irish transport and how travel perceptions and behaviours are formed from a very young age. There is a lot of research ongoing. There is the Technological University Dublin Diamond project and, obviously, we connected early on in both our projects. I am aware of the work that project is doing as well. Something uniquely Irish that came through in our research was the frequency with which the role of the family came up in our interviews. We conducted 21 interviews with women, spending two hours with each woman, and joined them as they went about their daily travels. Family came up in every single interview. The research team that worked on my project said that this was quite unique for Ireland. It is about designing for families and communities not just for individuals. That brings a system design approach to the whole transport ecosystem, not just looking at individual bits and hoping that it will all work at the end of the day. That is my tuppence worth. If I were the Minister for Transport tomorrow, that is what I would bring to the table from the get-go.