Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I may share time with Deputy Harkin, who has not yet arrived in the Chamber. I only wish I had some of this time last night to speak during statements on the report of the air accident investigation unit. I had three and a half minutes to contribute to the debate on that 350-page report. Perhaps the House will, at some point, look into priorities for the time allocated to different business. Having said that, this is a very important Bill and I do not mean to diminish its significance. However, it is ironic that I should get 20 minutes to speak in this debate and only three minutes to contribute to the discussion on the very important topic last night.

The Bill consists of 13 Parts and 46 sections and references 53 Acts. It is important legislation but its introduction raises the question as to when we will have a consolidated road traffic Bill. It is not fair to the Garda or the people who will be affected by the legislation that it should be so complex. It is not fair to anybody. The programme for Government includes a commitment to consolidate road traffic legislation and I would like a date for when that will be introduced. I acknowledge that the past year and three quarters have been very difficult because of the Covid crisis, but at some stage there must be a recognition that we need to review legislation to see whether it is functioning and consolidate it where necessary. To proceed as we are doing is intolerable.

There is an urgency to this Bill because we have a situation whereby users of e-scooters are currently functioning outside the law. However, there has been an attempt to put so much into this Bill that it makes it difficult to scrutinise. There are very good provisions in the Bill, which I support, although there are also one or two measures in respect of which I have concerns. I am not a member of the relevant committee but I understand from its Chairman that members will be going through the Bill line by line and teasing out its provisions. That is very important because, for the first time, we are going into a private space in terms of following up a perceived offence. Up to now, driving was in public; now we are looking at a private space. That needs to be teased out, as does the judicial review section, and there are one or two other provisions that give rise to concern.

I pay tribute, as I do every time we debate new legislation, to the Library and Research Service for the Bill digest it has produced. It is stated on page 2 of the document:

A Bill Briefing page is available which is being updated ... There is no usual table of provisions and the Bill is examined thematically. Not every topic in the Bill is examined because of a lack of time.

For the second time this week, I am highlighting that this fantastic service is under extreme pressure. There has been no such statement by the service but it is my interpretation of the situation each time I read a Bill digest. In this instance, the document goes through the provisions thematically rather than individually for the stated reason of a lack of time.

The digest, the briefing information and the explanatory memorandum explain that the Bill aims to provide for the regulation of a new class of vehicles called powered personal transporters. I will not go through the details as they have been outlined by other speakers. It also seeks to regulate scramblers, quad bikes and similar vehicles. I support Deputy O'Donoghue in his comments about looking at the issues positively and seeking to provide alternative places for the use of quad bikes. It is a good suggestion, which the Minister might consider.

It is important to consider the context of the number of deaths and injuries arising from the use of these vehicles. In October 2020, the Road Safety Authority and the Garda Síochána urged parents not to buy scramblers or quad bikes for children as Christmas presents. Christmas is coming again and the same concerns arise. The RSA's provisional statistics show that in the period from 2014 to 2019, three of the six people who died in Ireland as a result of an incident involving a quad bike or scrambler were aged 18 or under. The statistics also show that in the same period, 60 people were involved in collisions involving a quad bike or scrambler on a public road. Of those killed or injured between 2014 and 2019, 41% of casualties were aged 18 or under. That is the serious context in which we are debating this legislation.

The Bill provides for many new powers and an alignment of matters of law in Ireland with European law in terms of medical fitness and so on. I welcome all of that. I also welcome the enabling provisions for the M50.

I also welcome the linkage between the driving licence and the vehicle ownership records, and the extension to traffic wardens of the powers available to gardaí in terms of paying fixed fines. There will be three stages, or a trinity of attempts, albeit the fine more than doubles on the third occasion.

I also pay tribute to the traffic and community wardens. I remember when the post of community warden was introduced at local level in Galway, it had an unbelievable job description and they should have been paid 20 times what they were being paid. They were to be the eyes and ears of the community on the ground and to deal with just about everything. It was rolled out as a pilot project, but was never quite rolled out properly after that in terms of the number of wardens we need on the ground. Our city would be much better for having more wardens. That is something else I suggest we look at.

The Minister of State talked in here about the challenge and said we were attached to our cars. That is not true. Motorists have been left with absolutely no choice but to use their cars. I put my hands up and say I am back using a car. I drive to Dublin every week. I am somebody who used public transport, while realising other people could not. I am not into a blaming game. I am into recognising the climate change challenge leaves us with little option but to have a fundamental change. I have gone backwards and am driving to Dublin every week. I try to leave the car untouched from when I drive up on a Monday until Thursday and I resume my use of the bike at the weekend. However, this is not about me. It is about what has happened as a result of Covid and it does not suit my own life. There is no public transport for me to get home late on the evenings when I go home.

We have a legacy of inadequate public transport and now we have Covid on top of that, where we do not use public transport anymore. That is a huge challenge for the Minister, on which I would happily work with him, because we need 100% use of public transport. That is not happening.

The Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, said many things in her speech. I listened to and reread it. The other thing that attracted my attention was her statement that the main challenge before her as Minister of State at the Department of Transport is to ensure the establishment of a sustainable transport system. She then went on to talk about active travel. I absolutely endorse the statement that the main challenge is public transport. Without that, we cannot even pretend we are going any way towards meeting our climate challenges.

I am being a little parochial by referring to Galway, but I do so to make general points. I do not want to sound like a broken record when I mention again that I had the privilege of being mayor of Galway some years ago. The only reason I mention it is that my colleagues and I forced the inclusion of park and ride facilities in the then city development plan, which became law on 1 February 2005. Some 16 years later, we have no park and ride in Galway. It was one of the occasions on which the councillors did their job against management advice, forced the situation, put in park and ride services in the east and west of the city, and left it up to management to roll that out with our encouragement. It has simply never happened. Can one imagine that we have no park and ride in Galway, which is one of the four or five designated gateway cities? We now have a situation in which it will be very difficult to get enough space for park and ride, other than the successful but limited service provided at Christmas. We were told in one of the last statements from management, of which there were a few before I left to come up to this august building, that it was premature to roll out park and ride. That was 2016. Here we are in 2021 with no park and ride.

I hope some Minister will stand up and tell me I am totally wrong when I say there is no master plan for Galway city, based on the common good. There are plans, but no master plan led by the public service. I am a great fan of the public service, while being constructively critical. We have no master plan for a city destined to increase its population by 50%. Instead, we have developer-led development. The Minister's colleague, the Minister, Deputy Coveney, agreed with me on more than one occasion, on the Dáil record, when I said we were back to developer-led development in Galway city. I do not know how many times I have to repeat it, but that is what we are at. We have a significant amount of land. A major strategic centre in Ceannt Station in the middle of Galway is being led by the station and an interested party. The docklands, under a limited company, is developing its land in the sense that it is seeking to sell off the available land to fund the development of the docks sometime in the future, in a city where the housing crisis is worse than Dublin, with no exaggeration. The Minister knows this.

I could go on a rant, but I do not want to. I want to set out the facts. I hope, at some stage, sense will prevail and we will get a public servant who produces, with the help of expertise, a master plan for Galway to face its challenges in climate change and biodiversity, not to mention traffic congestion. As I have the time, I will use it. I will go so far as to say that traffic congestion has been allowed to build up unsustainably and deliberately. There is no park and ride or comprehensive school programme to lift the school traffic off the road. It is impossible at peak times. All our eggs went into an outer bypass from 1999 onwards, which the Minister knows, because one of his colleagues was there at the time. From 1999, an outer bypass was the only solution put forward, regardless of my opinion. I am clearly on the record for my opinion on this. No other sustainable steps were taken apart from those which were piecemeal, reactive and forced. We are back again with the N6 project and waiting for An Bord Pleanála to come up with its decision, which has been adjourned many times. I will not pre-empt that decision, but I will wait and see.

It seems to me that if we are seriously interested in climate change, we should be looking at Galway as a pilot city. The selection of Galway was debated at the climate change committee. It is one of the cities destined to grow and increase its population by 50%. It has two public and two private hospitals, two universities and many schools. The vast majority of people, as the Minister well knows, want to come into Galway. I understand, even from the figures from the engineers brought in for the N6, that more than 90% of people want to come into Galway. Therefore, it is crying out for an urgent master plan. It is crying out for sustainable development within the footprint, which is in keeping with the national planning framework and the plan. However, that is not happening and cannot happen if it is developer-led. I implore the Minister, as I have done on many occasions, to bring forward the proposal to have a feasibility study for light rail. I ask him to prove me wrong that light rail is part of the answer to the traffic congestion in Galway. I ask him to choose Galway as a pilot project, with all the advantages it has, such as the natural beauty and fantastic employment record. The city is going under because of a housing and traffic crisis. Let us bring forward a feasibility study for light rail. Let us get a sustainable master plan for Galway city. Let us look at the infrastructure that is stopping proper development on the east side of the city. Deputy Canney has mentioned the lack of infrastructure and sewerage facilities there many times. If we go out to the county, raw sewage is going from Carraroe straight into the bay and Clifden has a problem. We need basic problems sorted out in order to have sustainable development.

The Minister might ask what all of that has to do with the Second Stage of this Bill. It has everything to do with it. The Minister of State said the biggest challenge is in sustainable development, which is not happening, despite the sweet words. Last night, I read out words from a psychologist, with regard to the Air Accident Investigation Unit, who talked about words meaning nothing. That is the most dangerous thing happening in politics. Words do not mean what they are supposed to and people are losing trust. There is a huge danger that we are encouraging people on the right to look on us as all the same and without difference. That is a very frightening prospect.

Returning specifically to the Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2021, I think it was the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, who spoke about active travel, walking and cycling.

I do both of those. I spend my time on a bike when I am not driving to Dublin and I can tell the House that it is positively dangerous. I have reached the point where I watch out all the time. I have that experience. I have a small amount of wisdom about it from burnt experience. Mar a deirtear i nGaeilge, tá ciall ceannaithe agam. I watch out all the time. Most people cannot do that. They are nervous on the road. During the pandemic we had a fantastic cycle lane system in Salthill in Galway. It is now gone, but it is under review again. It was a majority of councillors, led by the mayor - I declare an interest here because the mayor is my sister – who forced a situation to get this back on the agenda. They did that with maximum consultation with businesses. At some stage there has to be a realisation that cycling must be made safe. I listened carefully to what Deputy Hourigan said in that regard. I echo what she said.

I refer to Galway with a general meaning behind it. Twenty years ago, we introduced the Barcelona declaration, which deals with universal access and demands that buildings and roads should be designed to be universally accessible, to do away with the distinction between abled and disabled. However, the idea that there should not be a distinction between abled people and people with a disability went by the board during the pandemic. The Government's message in this regard was inadvertent at first, but it failed to learn. We cannot give a message that allows for the extension of alcohol consumption facilities out onto the public way without examining the rights of others, such as residents, people with disabilities, and so on. That examination did not happen. I do not blame the Government for failing to do that initially. I agreed with it. However, at some stage the Government has to say "oh good lord, this is not working" It should get a report back from the local authority on whose rights have been affected by this policy. Deputies and councillors in Galway have been inundated with residents telling us that they just cannot sleep because things are happening in their back gardens and that various obstacles are being thrown in the way of people with a disability as they try to negotiate the streets of Galway.

I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that little or no progress has been made on the Bearna greenway. I left Galway in 2016 when I got the privilege of coming here to the Dáil. In January or February of that year, just before I came here, my last meeting was with the private consultants who were engaged with the local authority to progress the Galway to Bearna greenway. It took me a year and a half, or longer, to get copies of the reports that were done on it. I was then told that they remained as draft reports. As such, they were never discussed at council level. That was the management response to those reports. I do not expect the Minister to be a god or to work miracles, but at some stage there must be consequences for the lack of progression of the Bearna greenway. Little progress has been made on the other side of Galway, at Oughterard. However, progress was made beyond Oughterard on the Clifden side. I welcome that.

Much more can be made of the school transport scheme. Any time a Member asks a question about school transport, they get a stock answer about the hundreds of thousands of students that the school transport scheme is providing for. We need an urgent review of the school transport scheme to make it open to everybody. Obviously, the schools have to be prioritised. However, if there are available buses, they have to be looked at. I do not personally think that BusConnects is the answer for Galway. The Minister talks about facilitating BusConnects. The revolutionary change of which Deputies speak will come when we move people into Luas-type transport, rather than into buses. I am, however, open to other views. My preference is for light rail, and to get a feasibility study on it as soon as we can.

I have nearly used all my time, but the last thing I would like to draw to the attention of the Minister is Bus Éireann, specifically the number of buses that remain parked and unused in its parking area in Galway city. My understanding is that the figure amounts to hundreds. I could be exaggerating, although I always try to understate, rather than overstate. It has been brought to my attention that the buses are sitting there with a view to being sold off a different auction. This is because there are certain regulations about not using a bus after a certain time. I understand the vast majority of those buses are not within that time. Even though there is massive traffic congestion in Galway, there is a substantial number of buses just sitting there when they could be used as part of the solution, even on a temporary basis.

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