Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Deputy about the safe routes to school programme being the centre point of safer transport for all our communities. The great advantage of schools, particularly primaries, is that they are at the centre of our communities, so they are a way of providing better and safer transport systems for every town and village across the country. The programme is very popular, with 930 schools having applied. We were only able to fund 167 in the first phase and 108 in the second phase. We have completed 25 of those projects, with 33 under construction, 31 at the detailed design stage, 64 either at the preliminary design stage or in a statutory consultation process, and 11 at the development phase. They are all being developed, although it is taking longer than I would like, often because a project is contentious. Creating safer spaces outside schools often means slowing down traffic, redirecting it or regulating parking. While some of these measures may be popular initially and everyone wonders who could be against safe routes to schools, it can be contentious when it is actually done in front of a school. We can overcome that, though. A demand management study is on the way and I hope it will go to the Government in the coming weeks. In that context, we will look for local authorities to play a stronger role and combine what we are doing on active travel with demand management. We will also look to create safer spaces and scale up the investment.