Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

This is a great day for road traffic in Ireland. This is badly needed legislation, especially given the increased use of e-scooters, e-bikes, etc. I congratulate the Minister and his team on the work to date.

There are a few different points I wish to raise around the Bill itself. Section 56 of Part 15 relates to zero emission vehicles Ireland, ZEVI. I looked up the website and it looks good and is impressive, but all the information there is about e-cars. I spent more than 14 years on the modal shift and working with schoolchildren in rural and urban areas throughout Clare, Galway and Limerick. To think we are going to focus on e-cars replacing petrol and diesel ones deeply upsets me. We must give space back to people. It does not matter what a car runs on. It is not the Green wish. We are being accused of trying to get everybody into e-cars, but that was never our wish. The figure of 1 million e-cars was thrown out there way before we got into Government and it is really important to look at what it means to have an electric vehicle and what ZEVI's role might be.

I live in the middle of nowhere in rural Ireland but I do not think e-cars are the only solution we have, even in rural areas. In urban areas especially it is madness because the more urban the area, the more you are fighting for space. It therefore makes much more sense to think about other things like e-cargo bikes for deliveries. Outside my office I see DPD has copped on to that. It has given up on driving trucks around to deliver and is using e-cargo bikes. This is a game-changer. That is great in Dublin but in Ennis I still see trucks driving through the small narrow streets. We have those sorts of streets in most towns and villages and so we need to look at the whole e-cargo bike option. I see it in some places in Dublin, perhaps in better-off areas and really built-up ones, but we need to look at how we see EVs as part of the solution. It is not just about cars.If we have staff in - and with everything else, this I presume, will be increased - it is important to ensure that any work, staff resources and financial supports applied to electric cars are also applied even more so to work on e-bikes, e-cargo bikes and adapted cycles. The information on the grants we currently give for e-bikes is not even given on the bike to work scheme. It is very important that people who are working are included if we are to take this seriously.

If one looks at engine-idling, for instance, outside of schools; that would be solved by having EVs but it does not solve all of the other issues. There is still a danger with cars no matter what they run on. There is the pollution from tyres and the lack of space for children to be able to walk beside their friends because the cars, even if they are electric, still park on footpaths all the time. There is such a significant issue there around road traffic and no matter what size car a person has, or what the car runs on, one also has the issue around speed. We very much need to look at that issue. Many people ring me all the time saying that they need a speed limit in their housing estate. When I go to the engineer and say that that makes sense as there are 50 children living there, the engineer says hey cannot act because legislation would be needed around it. If a car is travelling at 60 km/h and hits somebody, nine out of ten people will die. If a car is travelling at 50 km/h, half of them will die. That is the current speed limit that we have in our towns, villages and housing estates. This is just insane but if we had a 30 km/h speed limit, then one out of ten people will die. That is not to mention all of the terrible and severe injuries that also come with these accidents.

As somebody who lives in the middle of nowhere, we have many rural roads which I believe would be safe enough to use an e-bike on. For older people, this might also be a choice. In other countries we see that there are incentives to swap one’s car and switch to an e-bike, as well as incentives to buy an e-bike in the first place. This has a very significant part to play in transport and the transformation we need will not be just in respect of e-cars but it will also be e-bikes.

We see very significant issues of air pollution from the tyres themselves. There is also, of course, the affordability issue, as not everybody can afford an e-car. I want to dispel that myth that the Green Party members are all upper-middle-class and that we will all buy e-cars. None of us has ever said that. That is just a nice populist thing that has been thrown out there. We believe and know, however, as does our transport spokesperson, Deputy Leddin and the Minister himself, that it is not all about cars, whatever they are being run on, even if they are run on hemp oil.

We want to get people moving. We have very significant health issues and we are moving like the 51st state of America in respect of our obesity levels. One quarter of our nine-year-old children are overweight. This is because of cars which is the number one cause; I am sorry but that is just a fact.

We need to take this seriously; there is almost this cars versus bikes thing, but it is not about that, it is about people. It is about people moving and the space we share, whether that is a truck, a cyclist, or an old person with a disability aid; we have to learn how to move around together. Speed is one of the biggest things we can address to make it safer. Then it is about having respect for the space we have given over to cyclists, bikes and walkers, and not to be parking on their spaces, as I regularly come across that. We have new laws and fines but we do not have enforcement.

One other issue I wish to mention relates to a great company in Shannon, which the Minister and I visited, that is making autonomous vehicles. We are looking to allow the company to test drive them, which is necessary, and these will bring some benefits with them. If they are going to be test driven on public roads, it is important that we insist and ensure that there is a human in the car because this is only at test stage. Testing means we are unsure as to whether it will definitely work. The bottom line is that there must be a human in the car because if anything goes wrong, which it could do because this is at test stage, we need a person to be able to grab the wheel, press the brake, or whatever is involved.

I have been going around the country doing guerrilla road signs with parents all over Munster with a #30 km/h, love-30 campaign. This should not be an outside-of-the-system kind of campaign any more. Many parents have made signs asking people to slow down as their children want to walk to school. We have to put children, people with disabilities and older people at the centre of this whole debate as to how we move around. I know that the Minister understands this but we have to get this message through to the National Transport Authority, NTA, to Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, and to the National Roads Authority, NRA. There are many groups but we have to get them all together to agree that it is time to stop putting car as king and to put people first, because we are doing a disservice to our children, to our older people and to our people with disabilities.

I thank the Minister for his work today and I look forward to a day when I can get on my e-bike, travel down my country road, put my bike on the bus, get the bus to the train, and get the train to Dublin. At the moment I am forced to drive to the train because we do not have that connectivity there. That is what the reality of rural dwellers is now. Buses connect but it is not just about buses. Both pedestrians and cyclists must be connected with the bus and with the train and this is a very good first step in getting there because I believe that e-bikes and e-scooters have a very significant part to play. It is good, then, that we have some rules and regulations around them now. Gabhaim míle buíochas.