Mr. Ciar?n Ferrie:

I will come back to what Deputy Daly said about the school run, which was also picked up on by Senator Ruane. If people drop their children off and park illegally, what is the alternative? What do we do? It is important to realise this a bit of a vicious cycle. People are driving their children to school because it is unsafe for them for them to walk or cycle, but by driving their children to school they are adding to the safety issues on the roads. The issues of enforcement and infrastructure have to be tackled. We have to provide children with the option of cycling to school.

A very good measure of how safe our roads are is the number of children cycling to school. We often hear about the number of fatalities and that is an important measure of road safety but when we compare Ireland with somewhere like the Netherlands, for example, 75% of secondary school students there cycle to school. In Ireland, as members will know, that number is approximately 5%. It is very low, although it may have increased in the past few years. From our perspective, that tells its own story about the perception of safety on the roads. As a result of that perception, more people are driving because they believe that is the safest way to get their children to school. That is the issue that has to be tackled.