Seanad debates

Thursday, 19 May 2022

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

 

10:30 am

Photo of Rebecca MoynihanRebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise the issue of the unequal allocation of cycling resources within Dublin city on National Bike Week. Dublin City Council has drawn down funding for active travel measures. We all know that in order to facilitate a move away from the car towards active travel methods such as cycling and walking, we must invest in these measures but my constituency has received 13 times less funding than the neighbouring constituency of Dublin Bay South, which is the Minister for Transport's own constituency. To put that in context, Dublin South-Central gets 1% of the active travel measures while Dublin Bay South gets 15%. It is a very unfair allocation of resources.

Dublin South-Central has an enormous problem with bad roads and poor cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. We have, for example, been pushing for pedestrian infrastructure along Herberton Road to allow school children to cross the road safely but are constantly told that it would be subject to funding from the National Transport Authority, NTA, for the Grand Canal cycle route. As soon as one crosses the constituency boundary, one notes that the Grand Canal cycle route is very pleasant but, unfortunately, on my side of the canal, cyclists are squeezed, forced to compete with traffic and do not have the same cycling infrastructure at all. During National Bike Week we must make sure that poorer and more disadvantaged constituencies such as mine get an equal allocation of cycling infrastructure.

We know that 59% of journeys are less than 2 km but we have to make it safe for people to cycle. I cycled in to Leinster House today and in a bus lane I was squeezed by many, many cars. I had to point out that they should not have been in the bus lane until much further up. That is a daily occurrence and is difficult to deal with every day. I say that as a long-term cyclist who has cycled to school since the age of six. I would like to see equal allocation of active travel measures within the Dublin South-Central area.

I also want to flag and raise an issue that is going to become bigger over the summer months, that is, the report of the Construction Defects Alliance, which is due to be published in November. I am afraid that the clock will be allowed to tick down on this when the report is handed over to the Minister. There are many people living in apartment complexes in my area who are dealing with huge individual bills for fire defects that were caused through no fault of their own.While we have a redress scheme for mica, what seems to be emerging for construction defects are low-cost loans. That unequal treatment of people who live in urban centres and apartments is unacceptable. I ask that we keep an eye on this and, when the report is published, provision be immediately made for redress for potentially up to 100,000 apartment owners throughout the State, not just in Dublin, who will face huge bills. It should not be a low-cost loan, a loan or a tax rebate but exactly the same redress as that for the mica families, which is full redress for the construction defects that happened through no fault of their own.

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