Ms Marie Donnelly:

On park-and-ride, the Deputy is correct, although I might take it even a further step forward. We absolutely need more of it, but we also need more parking capacity at our train stations. If we want people to take trains, we should facilitate them travelling a short distance perhaps by car followed by a train journey. I take the train regularly and it can be challenging to find a parking space anywhere near the station, so people tend to be pushed back in that regard. This is about joined-up thinking to get people out of their cars in a way that is realistic for them. I would fully support the Deputy on that.

On SUVs, the council, in its recommendations last year, called specifically for the vehicle registration tax, VRT, to take account of both resource and energy efficiency. The Deputy is quite right; the embodied energy and the weight of the car would be reflected in the VRT charged for the car.

GoCar is new and is happening in other cities, and the same is true of shared bikes. We have them to a small extent in, for example, Dublin, but city bikes that people can take or leave by using an app are very popular. There is huge demand for them and they are very well utilised in cities where they are in place. I gather that in Dublin, they are limited to the area within the canals, so perhaps that could be widened. As Dublin is, relatively speaking, a flat city, it lends itself to their use. Some of our other cities are a little more hilly and, therefore, it might be challenging there. Nevertheless, people will use them. It is the convenience. The Leas-Chathaoirleach suggested everybody could be given a bike but, in a way, this would give everybody a bike where and when they need one.

As for e-bikes and e-scooters, the real issue relates to ensuring both the safety of the users and the speed at which they can travel. For the most part, these bikes are linked with an app, so GPS can control the speed. Doing that would make sense, given excessive speed is not safe. Moreover, in some other cities I have seen, city scooters come with a helmet. It probably makes sense, for safety reasons given the speed at which users are likely to travel, to wear a helmet when using these vehicles. These are just experiences I have seen in other cities that seem to make sense.