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

I agree with the Deputy. This is an example of how we can turn things around into a win-win. When that school transport issue is addressed, the journey for those who have to drive is much quicker. It is not about being anti-car; it is about recognising that in Dublin, for example, and I am certain it is the same in counties Clare and Limerick, during morning rush hour in school time, 30% of the traffic is made up of children being driven to school. There has been a fundamental shift in my lifetime. When I was going to school, the vast majority of children walked, cycled or took the bus. Now, the vast majority are driven. In fact, we have evolved such an incredibly car-dependent system that in many parts of the country, as I recall from recent censuses, more schoolgirls drive themselves to school than cycle to school. That is crazy because when safe alternatives are provided, there are benefits for health, traffic congestion, and a cleaner environment and so on. We are also seeing congestion outside schools during drop-off and pick-up, even in very recently built schools. It has been very disheartening for me to see that schools built in the past decade have effectively been designed with the assumption that the reality is everyone is driven to school. We then find there is chaos outside the school gates without proper set-down and where it is impossible to cater for the volume of cars. We have a real problem.

We are addressing this through the safe routes to school programme, which is an attempt to reverse and change the situation, and deliver improvement in the environment around the school and the way to it. Some 930 schools applied to be part of that. Our resources were limited so approximately 275 are involved in the scheme. To be honest and upfront, the latest figure we have is that approximately 65 of those projects have been completed. The problem is when we start to change anything in our society, and change is difficult, we suddenly find that what seems like a good idea in that who could argue against making it safe for our children to walk, cycle or get the bus to school, it involves changes on the ground that, for a variety of reasons, may discommode some people. We find there is often real opposition. It takes a lot of public consultation and a very lengthy process to try to get agreements to even simple measures, such as safe set-down areas or traffic-calming measures around schools.

I absolutely agree with the Deputy. Like so many other things, this has to be an area where local government leads and where there is agreement at council level. We in Dublin are not going to tell people in Ennis, Shannon or Kilfenora what they should do outside primary or secondary schools there. It does have to come from local authority level whereby a local authority makes a decision that it will strategically back this and change the patterns.