Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I call for a debate on BusConnects, with the Minister in attendance, in the context of the current public consultation period. BusConnects, in principle, is visionary. The idea of upgrading our cycling infrastructure and of public transport in the city being more accessible is fantastic. However, it will involve an enormous infrastructural change to our capital city. To give due regard to the National Transport Authority, it is running public advertisements, virtual rooms and having one meeting per corridor. It is in this regard that we need to have a discussion. The public meeting aspect of this is happening on a 90-minute Zoom session where any public representative or only a nominated community representative may enter one question. Not everybody on the call is getting to ask a question. Consequently, there is no real public meeting aspect. It is limited to a six-week consultation period but six weeks is not enough, not in the middle of a pandemic.

While I applaud the NTA's creativity and effort in the manner in which it is trying to engage and get the information out, confining the consultation to a six-week period and a 90-minute meeting per corridor is completely and wholly inadequate. There are major concerns. For instance, it has gone to get lengths in the context of traffic modelling but there are concerns about, for example, the area in the Dublin South-Central constituency where there is a confluence of three corridors. When I asked if traffic modelling has been done in respect of this matter, I was informed that it would be done at the planning permission stage. That needs articulation right now. We need the Minister to come before the House for a debate on instructing the NTA to extend that consultation period to at least the end of the February.