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

I will start by replying to Deputy Aindrias Moynihan. As it happens, I had a meeting with Cork County Council last week on the issue of sustainable travel in general. I take every chance I get to encourage local authorities to make an application for funding and look to develop their infrastructure. The benefits, as I see it, are setting out a direction of travel. We are running a towns first strategy aimed at bringing life back into the centre of Macroom and any other town. It would help if we could put good quality infrastructure in the centre of towns. It would be particularly appropriate where there are rows of terraced houses, tightly knit together. It is hard to service those houses with electric charging points because if three or four households in a row have an electric vehicle, there would be a difficulty on the distribution grid at that level, as well as the potential problem of getting a parking spot outside the house and so on. Having that sort of infrastructure would be a part of a town first revival.

I was impressed with the engineers and officials I met from Cork County Council. There was a lot of discussion around public realm and investing in the centre of towns. This is now part of the public realm infrastructure.

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