Ms Marie Donnelly:

Cyprus, believe it or not. It is also a small island. Of course, these are just surveys and the results will vary, but 60% of our journeys take less than 15 minutes, and about the same proportion are less than 2 km. The Leas-Chathaoirleach cycles 6 km, so he will know 2 km is not a very long distance, whether walking or cycling. It is a matter of attitude and practice. Part of the process is communication of the message, as he rightly said, but it is also about facilitating people to get out of the car and take the alternatives.

For cycling, that means road space needs to be reallocated. A sufficient number of cycle paths need to be in place whereby people feel safe, including at junctions, because if one does not get the junction right, it can be very dangerous for a cyclist. Also, our streets need to be attractive to walk in. One area that the council has discussed is a personal hobby horse of mine. Looking at the number of trees in our urban spaces and comparing it with somewhere like Berlin, in the past ten years more than 80,000 trees have been planted in Berlin. When one walks in the streets now, there is a green, shaded, pleasant environment to walk in. We tend not to use our footpaths and pedestrian areas for planting trees and other shrubs, as the case may be, to make the environment pleasant for people to walk in. Part of the process involves putting the infrastructure in place, whether for cycling or pedestrians, then making it attractive for people to use those possibilities and to become familiar with them.

The Chair is absolutely right about one-off houses. We have recent figures on that. The number of one-off houses is still increasing, notwithstanding the national development plan and all the statements that have been made with regard to trying to have compact settlements and developments. We still have an increasing number of one-off houses. The Chair is absolutely right that this places a challenge on the public transport sector to try to facilitate the people who own those houses.

It is important to acknowledge that our public transport system needs two things. It needs to provide a service that is cost-effective, reliable and always on time for the people. It might not be the most convenient time but at least if people know it will be the time, that is a positive element. The second issue is that we need to speed up the rate at which our public transport is decarbonised. We need to move away from diesel buses. We need to have electric transport facilities available for our public transport so that we can decarbonise that transport and make that offer available to people who want to use it. I hope I have covered the questions.