Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There is a very important point on which we must be very careful here. I worked with active travel and people with disabilities for more than 15 years in my previous job dealing with children with disabilities in active schools. We must be very careful when we talk about cars and cyclists. The bigger issue as I see it is that we do not even design for able-bodied people. We have been designing for cars only. I wish any mother who is fully able bodied and trying to cross the road with her child good luck. I normally cycle, but as I have a foot injury I have been trying to walk around Dublin for the past few weeks and I cannot even cross the road without the light going to orange. It is super stressful.

That is not to mention cyclists perhaps frightening some people. There is a much bigger issue here. We have best practice, which is known as universal access, and that is the one we need to talk about. There is only one place in the entire country where one can park a disability bike. It is in Trinity College. We also have people with disabilities who cannot walk, but they can cycle and they use hand cycles. We must be very careful in this discussion in how we talk about universal access and design. There should be so much space for walking and cycling and for people with disabilities and the visually impaired. The bigger question is how we have given so much space to metal boxes. Have we become totally reliant on them so that we are literally not thinking outside the metal box? We have all the different groups fighting against each other for space. We must be very careful.

I know people with autism who get stressed out just trying to cross the road because of the lack of time - approximately ten seconds - that we give to the green man. I am not disabled but I have a crutch and a big boot on my foot at the moment and I cannot cross the road in Dublin without getting stressed out. I am not an elderly person, a person trying to cross the road with a two-year-old kid or a person with a full disability. We have a major issue here. We could have a whole committee just about design. I do not think cyclists are the beginning or end of our problems because we also have people with disabilities who cannot walk who use hand cycles. Space and how we prioritise it is a significant issue. The question is whether it is for people, no matter what their ability or disability, or if it is for cars. I had to say that because we must be very careful with the debate.