Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Coming from a County Kerry perspective, there has been a complete change in attitude towards cycling. When I went to school in the 1980s, there were bike sheds. I spoke to a teacher in one school recently and he told me five out of 500 pupils in this Kerry school cycle. In another school, three out of 300 cycle. None of those were teenage girls. In 2016, 70% of Kerry children went to primary school by car, which is 10% more than the previous census. There has been an 87% decrease between 1996 and 2011 in people cycling to secondary school. In the whole of the State, I think 700 teenage girls cycle to school compared with 19,000 in 1986. I remember bringing one of my children to school on the bike and one of the parents at the school gate saying to me she did not know I was off the road, which I was not by the way, for the record - not yet anyway.

A total of 90% of the cyclists going to school seem to be male and consequently there is a big traffic problem outside many schools, in Killarney and Tralee in particular. I spoke to a garda recently and asked him to send someone to monitor what was going on, because I do not think you can go straight into schools and start handing out fines. Parents would have to be given fair warning. The Garda put down cones at one school and one person came along and started parking her car there. When someone pointed what she was doing, she said she thought she was being guided into the spot as opposed to not being allowed park there.

The assistant commissioner mentioned an interagency response, and it might have been mentioned by a few people. That is important, because none of the cycle lanes in Kerry seem to be a different colour, which is important.

Most of the greenways currently being built in Kerry are guided towards tourism in rural rather than urban areas where people actually use them. It is really only an accident that some of them, at the beginning or the end of the routes, have become very successful urban greenways or cycleways.

I think Mr. Collins mentioned the planning situation and the inclusion of drop-offs. One school in Tralee was recently refurbished but no provision was made for people to drop off their children in a good way. I welcome the comments by members of An Garda Síochána on enforcement. When the gardaí came to the school that day, they had to go away because the unit staffing was down from 13 gardaí a couple of years ago to nine now. Seven of the gardaí in that unit were required in court on a District Court day on a Wednesday in Tralee, so the gardaí had to leave before parents came to the school at that time. No more than during Covid, it is important to engage with people and, as Commissioner Harris always says, police by consent rather than going straight in because that would not go down well.

I am not so sure about the 24-hour bus lanes as someone who drives in and out of Dublin every other day, sometimes at 11 p.m or 12 midnight. I am not sure if bus lanes are necessary at those times but every day is a school day, as they say, so I am open to ideas on that. I thank the representatives for their time. I ask them to see what they can do down the line about more gardaí in Kerry. I am sure that will be echoed by many members of the police service there. Some people say "the force" all the time but I am not comfortable with that phrase.