Dr. Sarah Rock:

I had my hand raised to address a previous point. I might answer a slightly different question, if I can. With regard to bringing sustainable mobility into the mainstream, we are bombarded nightly with television advertisements telling us how beautiful, fantastic and luxurious it is to drive a car. All our status, communications and marketing are about that. Besides the fact that much of our infrastructure does not cater for the needs of women, all the messages that we currently receive tell us that this is what we should aspire to do. There is a communications and marketing issue. We have to make sure that we design the infrastructure to meet people's needs. We also need to let people know about the status that goes with it and that it is good to use these methods of transport. They can cater for people's needs and they can travel in comfort.

I want to address independent mobility for children, which is important for many reasons. It frees up women from mobility of care duties. It is important for children's development. At present, about 60% of primary school children are driven to school. The Deputy asked if other places do it differently. We often talk about our Nordic neighbours. In Finland and Norway, the number of primary school children driven to school is in the 20% range. The rest independently travel to school. In Norway, it is part of the culture to tell children at the age of seven that it is time for them to walk to school. This is only suitable in urban environments. It would probably be a shock to many of us who have a seven-year-old to tell them to go to school alone. That is because they have a programme relating to safe routes to school. The local neighbourhood has child-friendly street design, with traffic cameras, with low levels of through traffic, low speeds, wide footpaths, parks that connect spaces, and child-friendly cycling infrastructure. That facilitates independent mobility.

In Ireland, we have a new safe routes to school programme under Green-Schools, which is a really good start. There is much new funding in this area. We are moving in a positive direction, but independent mobility is important and deserves further discussion.