Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I hope to raise a number of issues tomorrow during oral questions. As such, I will confine my brief contribution to those who should be travelling by air and those who use transport on the ground.

In the past couple of months, I and others, including Deputy O'Rourke, have spent an awful lot of time in this Chamber and behind the scenes trying to resolve an infuriating social welfare issue for workers in Aer Lingus. This was at a time when we should all have been concentrating our efforts on trying to navigate towards a solution, one where we would have a regime in place that would allow our aviation industry to reopen safely within public health guidelines, while giving workers some light at the end of tunnel. While we hope the social welfare issue has reached some kind of resolution, where has it left us? It has left these same workers still getting low levels of pay, even if they are now getting their full entitlement to short-time work or jobseeker's allowance.

We still do not have a testing and tracing regime in place. When the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, appeared before the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response at the start of August he said the Government was working on such a system. That was almost two months ago now and there seems to have been no progress on that.

Last week, the Tánaiste stated on national media that we needed to get to a place where we have pre-departure screening and testing. He indicated, however, that this was a long way away. Imagine a worker in the aviation industry, either in an airline or in support working in catering or cleaning and servicing our airlines, hearing that months into this pandemic, after the industry was shut down so quickly and understandably - the workers understood the reason early on - there is still no light at the end of the tunnel.

We were given the news today that Germany has put Ireland on its red list. If any of us was to fly into any airport in Germany, not just in the capital airport, we would be able to avail of a free Covid test. Germany has that in place right now. We do not even have anything close to that in place in the airport in our capital, never mind in our regional airports which are struggling as well during this pandemic.

It is clear the Minister for Health cannot lead on all things Covid and, to be fair to him, we understand that his brief is in health and non-Covid related health issues are mounting up. We need the Minister's voice on this. Livelihoods are at stake and we need the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to take a real lead. All the aviation workers want is to see light at the end of the tunnel. They want a pathway in which they can believe. They want to know they will have a livelihood and work to go to in a few months.

I will speak briefly on cyclists. One of the noticeable changes during the restrictions earlier this year was an increase in cyclists on our streets. This was obviously because there were fewer cars and people felt safer and cycled more. Unfortunately, they were not safer and the number of fatalities has continued at a similar, if not slightly higher, rate as last year, even though vehicular traffic has decreased. On Sunday, we had another cyclist fatality in a tragedy in my constituency. At the start of the month, we had the tragic passing of Thiago Cortes on the streets of Dublin. Almost 19 years ago, I witnessed a fatal collision involving a cyclist on the quays in Dublin city. There can be different factors involved in every incident involving the death of a cyclist. However, every death of a cyclist is linked not only by virtue of being a common tragedy but also by the fact that our roads remain unsafe for cyclists. We have seen work on the segregation of cycle lanes in and around Dublin and other cities during this pandemic. That is to be welcomed but we need ambitious plans to improve the situation.

We need to look at the roads leading into our major cities and towns. Former national roads, such as the N1 and the N2, have been bypassed by motorways and are ideal to give primacy for cyclists who commute every day on their bicycles. We need to come out of this pandemic and if we can provide resources in that regard, it would be fantastic.

I want to discuss pedestrians and people with disabilities. At the very basic level of transport we need local authorities to undertake an ambitious project of accessibility audits for every town and village. It is happening on a piecemeal and ad hocbasis. Journeys that all of us in this Chamber take for granted can be arduous or sometimes impossible for people who are in wheelchairs or have mobility issues. Simple remedies such as the dishing of paths, the matching up of paths with the opposite side of the road and pedestrian crossings are rather mundane and unsexy when it comes transport, but they are the bedrock on which safe and secure transportation networks are based.

We have legislation providing for access officers in all public bodies. Only 23 of our local authorities have hired access officers and, within that, the work of access officers is unclear. We need dedicated disability officers in every local authority to work with operations and planning departments to ensure that not only do we rectify the past mistakes in the building of our towns and villages, but that we plan for the future through our development plans so that everywhere is safe, secure and accessible for people with disabilities.

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