Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am conscious of the Minister's time but have a question on children and younger people being facilitated with a trial bike scheme. I am not saying that everybody has an issue with costs but some people might not be willing to go off and buy a bike if it is only going to be used for the occasional trip. A lot of people have bikes anyway but if people wanted to get a bike, could we have a facility whereby they could try it for a period? Maybe there could be a tracker on it and we could see that it is being used three or four times a week to go to and from school, and so on. Is there a difficulty with that kind of thing? I know that everyone in Ennis was given a computer a number of years ago. I am not sure they all got used but the idea was to promote Internet use at the early stages.

A lot of parents are probably scared of letting children out on roads and, as the Minister said, the safety element is very important. A lot of money has been spent on safe routes to school, harnessing residential estates and quieter roads and working out ways of getting places without using the busiest roads. What is needed now is an incentive for people to get out of the car and start using the bike. If they did so, a lot of them would not go back to the car. It might be fine to be sitting in a car but there is no reliability in journey time in urban Ireland, especially at going-to-school time. A lot of school children, if they knew they could get up ten or 15 minutes later because they are using a bike, would realise it is a win-win for everybody. Their parents might be delighted not to have to drive them everywhere as well.