Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is welcome and I thank him for his opening statement. He covered a lot of ground in it. I want to concentrate on the road safety aspect of his brief.

Previously, the Road Safety Authority was before the committee, as were An Garda Síochána and cyclist advocacy groups. Following the meeting, I contacted the assistant commissioner to look for figures for fines for people who have parked in cycle lanes. The figures that came back would make you ask yourself why we bother putting in cycle lanes at all.

I have the national figures here. One person per day is fined for parking on a cycle path. That is the average: one person per day. There were 350 fines in 2021 and the figure for 2022 is quite similar and not much better. I broke those figures down to see what they were in my constituency in Wicklow. Fewer than ten people in a year were fined for parking in a cycle path. There were fewer than ten in 2021, although we did much better in 2022, when 20 people were fined for parking on a cycle path.

The Minister of State knows well that we could walk through any town, village, city or suburb in Ireland and we would see cars on footpaths, on cycle lanes and in disability bays. The Minister of State also knows we agreed in the programme for Government, which he was involved in negotiating, that we would invest significantly in active transport, including cycle infrastructure and pedestrian infrastructure. This was to make routes safe for children to walk to school and to make it safer for people to cycle, not just because it is better for congestion, but because it is a climate adaptation measure.

I wonder where the breakdown is here. As a Government, we have committed to spend on this nationally. The Government's direction is to prioritise active travel, public transport, etc., but we do not seem to have that support from An Garda Síochána to enforce it.

We can put in the infrastructure but we rely on the Garda to enforce the law.

I acknowledge that An Garda Síochána does a wonderful job, and that the force is stretched and busy. A response to a parliamentary question I tabled states that "Gardaí pay particular attention to the four lifesaver offences, speeding, intoxicated driving, mobile phone use while driving and non-wearing of safety belts". Of course, gardaí should concentrate on that. If a person parks a vehicle on a footpath or cycle lane, and there is absolutely no reason not to because people know it is highly unlikely they will be fined and there is no punishment for the crime, but the person who parks in such a space will force children who are walking to school out on to the roadway and force cyclists into unsafe conditions. Not parking recklessly is a lifesaver action and gardaí are not supporting us. I would like the Minister of State's view on that. I ask him to liaise with the Minister for Justice and emphasise to him that the Garda needs to focus on this matter. The evidence here is that they are not or certainly they are not applying the law or fines.