John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will not knock the Minister for that, but what emerged from the Velo-city conference was an international community that was, by and large, disappointed by what it had found in Dublin. Data published by The Irish Timesshow that every three days a cyclist is treated in a Dublin hospital for trauma. Cyclists are inhaling noxious fumes. I know some of the schemes referred to by the Minister. One of them - the Dodder greenway - is in my county. It is a scenic route. I am sure it could be argued that it could be used for daily commuting, but at some stage someone is going to have to make a hard decision about what a Danish commentator referred to as the "free reign of motordom" in Dublin city. We can construct all of these things. As the Minister is aware, one of the big problems with BusConnects is that it is trying to facilitate buses, cars, pedestrians and bikes. That is why it wants to create highways into the city. It is the Government's answer to chronic traffic congestion and air quality issues in the city. However, we will be waiting an inordinate amount of time before any of this infrastructure is delivered in full and then connected. What radical proposals does the Minister have to stop the domination of the motor car in the city of Dublin and other urban areas where it is causing as much havoc to dissuade people from using their car and persuade them to switch to other modes of what he calls active transport? The Minister and I understand what is meant by the term "active transport" and use it interchangeably here, but many members of the public do not even know what the term means. It needs to be explained to them in order that they will understand where we are going from a policy viewpoint.

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