Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the tremendous voluntary and community efforts made by soccer clubs, GAA clubs and other sporting bodies at a community level throughout this crisis. Those clubs and their activities have been badly missed in our communities and they will need ongoing supports from the Department when they reopen.

There has been much talk tonight about integration and equality. There has also been much talk in recent months about flattening the curve. One Deputy used the term "breathtaking inequality" to described how sports capital funding is administered by the Department. We have had some spectacular examples of that and the Minister has left us a legacy of them. A sum of €150,000 went to resurface the hockey pitch at Wesley college, a private school, and €150,000 was also provided to Loreto high school Beaufort, another private school, for resurfacing a pitch.

I represent a part of the inner city of Dublin that is one of the most deprived and economically disadvantaged areas in the country. Between the two canals, there are approximately 40 clubs that require playing fields and there is no space for their teams to play on. There is an obvious reason for this, which is that any time land is available, it is siphoned off for development by wealthy developers because it is considered to be very valuable. I will take as an example St. Kevin's hurling club in Dolphin's Barn, which does outstanding work to integrate local youth. It is a problem to get local kids involved and to keep them involved in sport in the area. They have had a chunk of their pitch, which was a small enough playing space, taken from them for the development of private apartments. That is really shameful but it can go ahead because of lax planning regulations in the city. Let us imagine that between the two canals, there is no space for the teams put out by 40 clubs to play on. The clubs have to travel outside their areas to access decent sporting facilities. I would love to see us try to flatten the curve in the context of the inequality that exists in how we treat various areas and in how land, money and facilities are allocated to these very densely-populated communities in order to allow people to play sports and to facilitate and develop sports.

Due to the fact that people from the clubs to which I refer have to travel outside their areas, I want the Minister to address the question of public transport. Can he imagine, as we try to move back to what may be the new normal, hundreds adults and children from these clubs travelling on public transport, whether it is on Dublin Bus or Bus Éireann, on short or long journeys and without proper protection? The Government is being utterly hypocritical because there is much talk that masking should be used and that it is advisable. We heard from the WHO this morning that the suggestion that masking should be mandatory on public transport is perfectly reasonable.

Making it mandatory would put an onus on the State to provide masks. We are all familiar with the scenes at transport hubs in Madrid, in the cities in Italy and in places across Austria and Germany where representatives of the state stand there and hand out masks to passengers as they move in and out of public transport facilities. That is what must be done here.

I will use the example of Bus Éireann. I have spoke to the Minister about this previously. The protocols for return to work were issued on 9 May, some 33 days ago. It was only last week that the health and safety council of Bus Éireann finally held a Zoom meeting of all its national representatives to discuss what can be done. What can be done has not been done and those involved have wasted 33 days in making preparations for a return to something like normality. The Minister knows, as I do, that we will eventually have to provide more capacity on buses and that masking will be key to this. Protecting drivers will also be key. Some 35 drivers in the Broadstone depot alone have been sent home with symptoms of the virus. The statistics of deaths among bus drivers in London and New York, which, I admit, are much bigger cities, are very high - 42 in London and 120 in New York. For the sake of both passengers and those who work on buses, we need to do much more. The Minister's role in the context of intervening with the National Transport Authority is crucial because Bus Éireann drivers have been driving around without adequate protective screening.

We heard recently from Professor Kingston Mills of Trinity College that what is required on public transport is proper air filtering. I refer to a system involving the use of high efficiency particulate air, HEPA, filters, that will trap the virus. The systems we have on our buses are totally inadequate and 70% of the vehicles in the Bus Éireann fleet do not have windows that passengers can open. This means that the virus could be circulating in the are on these buses. The situation is extremely dangerous situation and it has to be looked at with a certain urgency.

Apart from all of the other issues to do with the lack of health and safety on buses, the Cabinet needs to address the question of sourcing masks and giving those who operate public transport hubs the capacity to issue masks in order that we can protect passengers as they move towards returning to work and, in particular, in the case to which I refer, if we want communities to have their children re-engage in sport. To begin to move to what might be the new normal, we have to protect them as well. This will be an important challenge that the Department must take up.

I would also like the Minister to address the question of the breathtaking inequality in the way sports capital funding is dished out to communities. I will take him around my constituency and show him the dearth of facilities in areas where the population is dense and, as I stated earlier, most economically deprived. I would like to have the Minister address those two questions.

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