Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I wish everybody a happy spring and a happy St. Brigid's Day. I will speak on springing into action in respect of two recent announcements by the Minister for Transport. He announced €50 million for rural infrastructure for walking and cycling and he also announced 248 new jobs in that sector.

Following on from Senator Blaney's remarks, this is not just an environmental or climate change issue. This is a mental and physical health issue. We have a significant issue at present in that a quarter of our nine-year-olds are overweight and we have huge issues with teenage girls in particular. At present, only 400 teenage girls cycle to school in Ireland. On the feast day of a powerful woman like St. Brigid, we need to look at this issue. As I know from working with active travel for 14 years, a major part of that is that when one approaches local authorities, they either have no money or no staff. As both those options have now been taken away from local authorities, I encourage Members to get on to their local authorities and push this agenda. Active travel is hugely beneficial, socially, mentally and physically for our youngest, oldest and those who lack accessibility.

We need to put pressure on our local authorities to up their game. A bit of red paint here and the odd pedestrian crossing there is no longer sufficient. We need to reconnect our towns and villages and enable our children, teenagers and old people to walk and cycle safely around their villages and towns.