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

I know the Minister's constituency and its estates very well. Years ago I was a transport campaigner and was brought to Holland to see all the latest cycling facilities. The most interesting things we saw were woonerf estates, in which the whole street was designed to be safe for all users. In these residential streets, 20 km/h is the standard default speed and every one of the streets I have mentioned would be perfect as woonerfs. It is an idea that has taken off across the world. In the United States some 400 cities are going with what they call "complete streets". In England they are known as "home zones" and that is what we should call them because that is what we have to design them for.

This legislation has to look to the future and we have to think about where we are going. As an example, what is the most car-based city one could imagine? I would say it is Indianapolis, on account of the Indianapolis 500, but where is Indianapolis going? The mayor of Indianapolis said recently that growing its workforce and attracting new talent required Indianapolis to do everything possible to make the city a place where people can easily walk to amenities in their neighbourhoods and can bike and drive to and from work, and a place where people want to call "home". I am being very local and very south Dublin but our city is great at attracting investment and all the estates I have mentioned would be perfect homes for people who worked in the centre of Dublin and in Sandyford and Cherrywood. This is a successful city but if we are to compete with Montreal, Auckland, Indianapolis and cities around the world as well as Amsterdam and Freiburg, we have to start thinking this way and start planning our streets with a view to creating communities.

I was very disappointed to read in the Minister's speech that 20 km/h would be the exception and would be at the discretion of local authorities. I would much prefer a 20 km/h limit for all the estates in the Minister's own south Dublin constituency. His constituency is mainly estates that are perfect to be created as home zones. Why not tell that to South Dublin County Council? It will be different in south Kerry but in south Dublin and in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, which are all home estates, let us make it the default option. Let us start taking out the ramps as they are not needed if we start designing the streets as complete streets. It will not cost a fortune and it will cost less in lives lost. It will cost less because we will not have to put ramps in. Big, fancy, expensive solutions are not needed. I know these streets and grew up in them without cars and we do not have to do that much to retrofit them to where they were. I grew up walking from Frankfort Park into Dundrum village and by doing this work we will create strong villages and centres around it. It is all doable with a bit of vision and by putting the pedestrian, the child and the cyclist first. We cannot do that if the car goes faster than the bike. Our streets are perfect for this so let us do it. Let us take the Bill but we should not make the 20 km/h the exception; it should be the rule in suburban areas. It is different in a country area but suburbs are made to be homes so we should be much more ambitious to make the changes that are possible by introducing this legislation.

There are three main provisions, one of which is a technical provision around international co-operation, which makes a lot of sense. The second main provision, for drug testing, also makes a lot of sense. In my 50 years in south Dublin I have never seen a policeman stop and apply the five impairment tests such as checking one's pupils, asking a person to walk with one foot in the air for eight seconds or the finger-to-the-nose test. It has never been done. It is dangerous to drive stoned and the saliva test makes sense as marijuana stays in one's system for some 30 days and the test will pick it up within 12 hours, which is the time during which it affects driving capability. It is a sane and rational approach to improving driver safety.

I cannot miss this opportunity to raise a local issue. I raised it in the Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, and there was a lot of media commentary on it. Our budget for safety and for cycling and walking is not enough. The Minister recently had to pull investments in the Dodder greenway and Tolka greenway, which would have been a perfect investment in a Dublin setting itself for the future. From the Columbanus and Ludford estates one would have been able to cycle all the way down the greenway to work and home again, safely.

The Dublin cycling campaign held a protest last week and there is another one next Monday and this issue will be going to the Minister's office because it is absolutely unacceptable. We say that our policy is for 10% of all our trips to be by bike but less than 1% of the transport budget goes on walking and cycling. We can pass legislation on the speed limit but Deputy Catherine Murphy is right that, unless we switch to a tenfold increase in the budget for walking and cycling, we cannot be regarded as serious about this. We will fall behind and will fail to realise to potential of this city. I am talking about Dublin but it is the same in Cork, Galway and Limerick, although they are wetter. Dublin is flat and is a perfect cycling city but we will never get there by spending less than 1% of our transport budget on walking and cycling. Let us get the budget right, as well as the 20 km/h zone, and let us apply the latter as the default system rather than the exception to the rule.

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