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

That initiative will be welcome. I agree that the main response to our traffic problem must be buses and cycling and pedestrian facilities in the first instance.

We have been talking about it for 20 years and I am slightly nervous that if we are just saying we are going into a consultation process, it is not real. For this to be real, there has to be a budget allocation in 2018. This has to be agreed over the summer as part of the budget process and it has to be substantial.

I mentioned earlier the projects that are ready to go, such as the Liffey cycle route, the Sutton-to-Sandycove bike route, the Dodder greenway, the Tolka greenway and the Santry greenway. These would all have a major effect in terms of making the city work, in addition to the bus measures the Minister mentioned. However, when we talk to local authority officials to see if these projects can be advanced, they say they do not have a single penny to do it. If this is to be real on both the bus and cycling front, yes, let us consult, but we have been doing that for 20 years. More than anything else, the Minister's seriousness or otherwise will depend on whether the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform allocates him the funding and whether he allocates within his own budget the funding for 2018 to make this real. Otherwise, there will be deep cynicism that we are just talking again as the gridlock gets ever worse.

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