Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

This will sound parochial but I will use an example I am aware of with respect to protected cycle lanes. In my constituency, the main roads of Howth, Sutton and Baldoyle in the Fingal County Council area have all had protected cycle lanes for the past couple of years. Where there are not cycle lanes, there is, by and large, dedicated off-road cycling infrastructure in place on the main roads. As soon as one crosses into Dublin City Council's area, that all stops. What eventually happened is the first section of the Grange Road in the city council area now has a protected cycle land that joins up with the bit in Fingal. When cyclists come to a roundabout, that just stops and they go into an area that is heavily congested with traffic.

A huge amount of this traffic is caused by people in cars making school trips and local trips. The parents in the area all say there is no safe cycling route to the schools for their children, so there is no way they will put them on the roads. They all mention the great protected cycle lane but it stops right at the border between the Fingal County Council and Dublin City Council areas. They now say it stops at the roundabout just up the road from that border. There is a logic to how the lanes are being done in the city. There is Fairview, BusConnects and all the other main roads and all that will come into place. Right now, however, we have people stuck in traffic congestion wondering why on earth there cannot be sustainable transport options, especially when there has been significant investment in it. They feel it might be different if we had a political champion in a directly elected mayor, someone who had a mandate in these areas. These schemes are also controversial and they are not universally popular, so if we had a directly elected mayor who had campaigned on active travel and had a mandate for it, would that not help drive these things forward?

Based on their own knowledge of how these things are so slow to be delivered and are taking several years, they might be able to explain to us how a mayor might or might not make a difference. How is it that in one local authority area, with the NTA's funding, these were put in a few years ago but a few metres or miles away in another local authority area, they are not there, even though there is interest in active travel. I ask the witnesses to use that as an example to explain to us the problems that hold these things up. We are interested in whether a directly elected mayor would help to drive this faster and maybe our guests could give us some insight into that issue or throw some light on it. I only use that as example. I am sure there are other locations around the city where there are similarities.