Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman and promise to be brisk.

I welcome the Minister to the House. I welcome his commitment to increased funding for public transport. While value for money is an important part of the discussion on public transport, I urge the Minister to not allow value for money to cloud the fact that public transport is primarily an essential public service. It is important that the public service subvention is not framed during the discussion as a subsidy to semi-State companies. It should be framed as public investment in essential public infrastructure. There must be wide recognition and monitoring of the benefits that may not appear on the balance books of those companies but in the participation and connectivity that they make possible. It is vital that we highlight these aspects.

We need to consider the cost of non-investment in public transport. I encourage the Minister to continue to press for investment in this area by making the case for what happens in the absence of public infrastructure and transport. In such cases we know that the cost is carried by individuals and communities. There are also costs in terms of Ireland's likely failure to meet its climate change obligations with a real and concrete fine of an estimated €6 billion reported in newspapers today. I welcome the Minister's recognition of climate change mitigation. I would like to know more about how he plans to engage with the national mitigation plan.

We must not simply monitor the take-up of various public transport services be they bus, rail or other means. We must consider creative ways to promote the use of these services. We must move beyond a simple business frame into a wider societal transformation plane that we need for public transport. The rail review must have an ambitious scope. It should not simply identify gaps or potential savings. It must come up with ambitious proposals to expand rail and bus services. In that regard, I encourage the Minister to ensure that we do not ever again make the kinds of mistakes that were made with the private contract that was issued for toll roads, which tied us into a countervening tendency.

My focus is on a key area that the Minister has not made a strong statement on and I urge him to do so today. He has held consultations in various areas. We have already had consultation on the national cycle policy framework of 2009. What are the plans for the delivery and implementation of the framework? Is it planned to appoint a national cycling officer? How does the Minister propose to achieve the target of having 10% of all journeys to be on a bicycle in both urban and rural areas versus the fewer than 2% at the moment? Will he set a spending target for cycling infrastructure for the National Transport Authority?