Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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8. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport his plans to enhance the impact of the work of smarter travel workplaces and campus programmes in relation to workplaces located in business parks on the outskirts of towns and cities where the planning and design of the parks have resulted in over-reliance on the private car; whether he has considered the provision of electric shuttles and bike share schemes to assist with modal shift in these locations; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41928/23]

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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This question relates to the smarter travel programme for workplaces and campuses. It is focused on how we get people around business parks, for example. They are very often out of town and are very expansive. Many of the companies based in these business parks want to lean in to facilitating public transport or active travel options, but I am not sure the infrastructure or the planning provision is quite there yet and so I wanted to ask the Minister about it.

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The NTA's smarter travel programme is encouraging more sustainable travel to and from workplaces. That potential is one of the reasons the smarter travel mark was selected to form part of my Department’s sustainable mobility policy pathfinder programme. That programme is about selecting demonstration projects to show how we can transform our country and our transport system quickly. Using funding provided by my Department, the smarter travel mark was launched earlier this year and seeks to recognise and celebrate organisations that are committed to active and sustainable travel for their workforce, students and visitors. The mark has had 87 expressions of interest to date, and eight organisations have received either the gold, silver or bronze award, including, I am glad to say, the Department of Transport itself.

The wider smarter travel programme is a national voluntary behaviour change programme and supports workplaces and third-level institutions to develop and implement sustainable travel plans for staff and student bodies. Programme partners are invited to survey their staff and students about how they commute to work or campus. The survey report guides organisations on how they can best facilitate, encourage and promote an increase in active and sustainable commuting. More than 230 organisations across Ireland are partners in the smarter travel programme, with 69 having joined since January 2021. Partners include private and public sector organisations including local authorities, leading hospitals and third level universities. Some of the private sector organisations are located in business parks such as Raheen, Ringaskiddy and Eastpoint.

Importantly, we are also supporting these behavioural change initiatives through continued and increasing investment in active travel and public transport services and infrastructure across the country to help people make the switch.

I might come back the Deputy in the later part of the question, but I make the point that while we need to work out what we do in business parks, such as Raheen Business Park down in Limerick - I believe Regeneron is a massive employer there - it is not just about travel within the parks. We need to work out how to get people to them sustainably and that will help them become sustainable campuses internally. The likes of the upgraded Limerick rail line and the opening of the Shannon-Foynes line will give us an opportunity to put a station in the middle of the business park. That would really transform it.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I am sure Deputy Leddin will adequately speak about Limerick. I will focus on a Waterford example, specifically the IDA Business Park there. There are a number of bus routes that drop people off at the Cork Road and the quality of the service is pretty good. However, if a person is headed to the premises of Sun Life, which is a massive employer, or Teva or Bausch + Lomb, or to Waterford and Wexford Education and Training Board to do a retrofitting course, you could be 1.5 km away when you alight at the bus stop at Woodlawn Grove. That is a 19-minute walk, more or less. If it is a rainy or wintery day it makes it difficult to make that decision, when one could drive straight to the door. There is a real potential here, especially in business parks of this type. They are crying out to burnish their green credentials, and not in a greenwashing way, as they are looking to seriously reduce what would probably be a scope 3 emission. They want to get their employees to the workplace in a sustainable way. The business parks are big enough and we should look at this to see what solutions could be there.

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The Deputy is absolutely right. Another example, one the Leas-Cheann Comhairle may be more familiar with, is at Parkmore in Galway. There we have some of the worst traffic gridlock, which is not serving anyone's interests. There have been some very detailed surveys to think fundamentally about how we can change the way people get to the business park, but also how they travel within it. The Deputy is right that innovative solutions are going to be key.

I cannot help noticing a connection with the Deputy's previous question. There is another example that is very local to him, but which is relevant and important. He mentioned schools in Tramore. I had the great pleasure of being there recently and visiting Ardscoil na Mara. It is a fantastic school doing brilliant work and was only recently built, but it was designed around the car and for everyone to drive to it. As the Deputy said, we have got this incredible congestion problem outside the school with air pollution and an unhealthy transport system that does not serve our kids' purposes. We need to look not just at business parks but at how we are building our schools, where we are building them and how we design. That needs to change because they are being built as if they are business parks, that is, with roads around them as if everyone is going to drive to school.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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We are over time. I ask for co-operation with the time because other Deputies are waiting to get in as well.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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The Minister might be interested in looking back on the discussion I had at the education committee this week. We had the forward planning unit of the Department of Education in and I raised the example of Ardscoil na Mara. It is a pretty hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists. It is set up for vehicular traffic. There is a role for the Minister's Department and the NTA to sit down with the Department of Education and make better planning decisions about how we situate our schools and how we use them as sustainable transport nodes within our local communities.

Returning to the business parks, there are solutions here. We cannot expect a bus route to divert through a business park and spend 40 minutes ferrying people around to the different places. We could look at things like shared mobility solutions. I can see e-scooters within business parks working. We could look at an electric shuttle bus within a business park, perhaps funded or co-funded by the different businesses there. I can seek that working. We should be looking at these as solutions.

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I absolutely agree. One of the benefits of our smarter travel programme, with which the business parks at Raheen, Ringaskiddy and Eastpoint are involved, could be the businesses collectively coming together to provide a common transport service within the business park. That might be a really good part of how that smarter travel mark is judged so we really reward the organisations and business parks that start to put the sustainability of the park centre stage.