Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Matthews. I would not like the rumour to go out that I am the real Chair. I may have been the Acting Chair for a year and a half but I am not the real Chair. I am just the Vice Chair by the consent of the committee. I apologise for being late; I had a previous engagement that I had attend. Of all the times I was not here for the start, I am very sorry that it was when the Minister was here. It is not a slight against him because I know him probably longer than a lot of people in this room as being my local TD for many a year. When I was a councillor, he was the TD for the same area and I pay tribute to him for all he has done in public life. I am sure we will see each other many times into the future. I used to hate, when I was not in the Chair, when people would come in late and repeat all the things everyone else has said. I am going to try not to do that.

I am around long enough to remember the Stillorgan QBC going through Morehampton Road and Donnybrook village, and the absolute horror among the good people of south Dublin imagining that road space was going to be taken away from their quite often rather large vehicles. It happened, and it happened in 1999, during my first local election campaign. It worked really well and all of a sudden people in Foxrock, Stillorgan, Cabinteely, Mount Merrion and Leopardstown were all getting the bus into work because it was much faster than the car. I am looking at the Dublin traffic plan now and thinking, "Here we are all over again". Sometimes you need to be that little bit brave.

One of the Minister's predecessors was the former Deputy Séamus Brennan, who the Minister would have known well, and I would have known very well. In fact, he is probably the reason I was ever in politics. He asked me to run the first time when he was Minister for Transport. He introduced penalty points, and he said there was a lot of people saying they thought he was being very brave, courageous or possibly stupid. However, he said let us just do three issues, and then it worked. I think the Dublin traffic plan has to be experimented with and tried, and people will probably go, "Oh wow, it is working really well and not causing half the problems we thought it would". I would like to get the Minister's thoughts on that with regard to the level of bravery, courage or possible stupidity that is needed to make the jump. Many of those jumps have worked.