Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Donnelly, and Deputy Leddin. We have the time to have a second round for members who are still interested in having a second round. As it happens, Deputy Cathal Crowe is not here, so I am the first.

I will put a few points Ms Donnelly a few points, and she might respond to them. Regarding the production of fossil fuel cars versus their sale, can people still sell second-hand cars after 2035? Will they be able to keep their car for as long as it keeps going, but not be able to sell it on DoneDeal or the second-hand market, or transfer it to a relative? Is it their own until it falls apart? Can they repurpose a fossil fuel vehicle into a battery vehicle, or is it more trouble than it is worth? Certainly, if my car is 15 years old and it is doing approximately 4,000 km a year, I would have thought I would use an awful lot less energy by keeping that on the road than I would by scrapping it, demolishing it and then using all the energy required to produce a new car, electric or otherwise.

She might take on board the point I made about insurance. At the moment, people can drive their own car. They are insured on their own car. They may not be able to drive other people's cars, depending on their policy. They might like to go other places and use other cars. At the moment, the up-front cost is getting the car. It is now sitting in the driveway. People pay their annual insurance. The marginal cost is the fuel. If people were doing the GoCar type model, they might get rid of their cars but I think people do not want to lose their insurance track record because if they ever get a job where they might have to have a car, they have to start from scratch and perhaps pay double or treble on their insurance.

A lot of the barriers I find towards cycling is not so much the shower element or whatever, but the security at the other end. If I bring my bike into town, will I know it is still there if I go to the cinema or a restaurant? We do not have enough secure bicycle parking areas. There are places where I think it will probably be okay, and there are places where I am fairly sure it will not be. A lot more needs to be done on that aspect of it. There are big bike parks in the Netherlands and other places where people can put them in, and they know, 99.9% of the time, that they are going to get them back. The amount of glass on the roads is huge, and it is only when one is cycling that one sees it. We need to do an awful lot more in improving the street sweeping. They are swept once a week but if the glass is broken in the morning or afternoon after the sweeper has been there, we could be stuck with it for a week.

The GoCar model has a lot of potential. I am not that familiar with it. I had not cycled in probably 20 years until ten years ago. I was on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. I was asked to get involved and become the cycling champion. That did not mean I was any good at it; it just meant I was to promote it. However, it changed my way of thinking, and every motorist should nearly be asked to cycle to see what it is like to be a cyclist on the road. I drive; I will drive and I need to drive sometimes, but I know that a lot of people who do not cycle feel a bit envious of all these bicycles flying past them. Then they get a bit annoyed when the bike is, possibly, avoiding a light or something like that. They are not the problem, however. We do not think about pedestrians in that way, and maybe bicycles are the most vulnerable after pedestrians on the road. They need, sometimes, to get ahead of a 40 ft container truck.

I agree with the point made by Deputy Leddin regarding the Netherlands. I was in The Hague just before Covid-19, and they were showing us photographs of what The Hague looked like in the 1970s, when there were cars absolutely everywhere. Almost nobody seemed to drive in the core of The Hague. I am sure there were some outside the core. However, if there was a bigger core, it would make it much more pleasant to cycle in. I had to go down across the quays earlier to speak at an event in the CHQ building, and I was able to cycle down on a bike through a load of areas that are very uncongested. However, as I was cycling back, there were cars everywhere queuing, and I was able to move much faster.

We need to do an awful lot. It may mean something like allowing people to be given bikes - sign up for a bike, and one is given a bike for six months. There may be a tracker on it to see how often it is used. The more people use them, maybe they get them at a reduced price, so long as one keeps using it, and I mean using it for normal, day-to-day trips. I am not necessarily saying it is to cycle up the mountains on a Sunday. There is no problem with that, but it is to eliminate the trips that we are doing in cars. That benefits every driver too. The more cyclists that are on the road, the less cars there are on the road. This will suit the older people, who are perhaps not as fit as they used to be and not in a position to. We must remember that not everybody can cycle, but an awful lot of people who may not think they can, can actually cycle.

They are just a few of my thoughts. They are more to take away, and go back to Government to bang the drum with it. We can say lots of things in here, but Ms Donnelly and the witnesses certainly come with all their apparatus and standing. We are very lucky to have them, which was a point made earlier. By all means come back on my thoughts, but I want her to be conscious that there are barriers to people cycling. The more barriers we can eliminate, the more modal shift we will get. That relieves pressure on the public transport system and the roads, and it is far cheaper for people to be on bikes and far healthier for them as well. We need more Luas lines, but we would not need as many and as much capacity if more people were cycling.