Malcolm Noonan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit, agus comhghairdeas leis. The Minister of State is very welcome. It is the first time I can congratulate him on his appointment, and I wish him all the very best over his term of office.

The Minister of State mentioned at the start of his opening contribution that behind each statistic is a story and a family. I want to speak about the late Barbara Gill. Barbara, as she was back on 19 April 2007, was cycling to work with a high-vis jacket on and her helmet. She came down onto Wolfe Tone Quay, down by the Ashling Hotel. She was tragically hit by a skip lorry, the driver of which made a last-minute decision to turn. Unfortunately, he did not pick her up given the blind spot in his mirror.

Barbara and her partner Ruth were new parents at the time. They had a little baby of eight weeks old at the time of the accident. These are the stories behind all of those statistics, and Barbara was just one of them. The Minister of State can imagine what a happy time that was in their lives, and her mum, Margaret, dad, Bill and partner, Ruth, were all naturally devastated. She had recently returned from Eritrea, where she vowed to raise funds for a school, and she succeeded in doing that. That is but a small part of her legacy. Barbara was an educator, an environmentalist, a human rights defender, a development worker, a mum, a daughter, a partner and a friend.

This is just one of those stories of lives cut short, and I want to use my time to speak about those vulnerable road users - cyclists, pedestrians, and people with disabilities, visual impairments and intellectual disabilities - who find themselves all too often at the receiving end of an urban planning system that is made for cars and trucks. It is not made for people. There has to be a shift in thinking, particularly in urban policy and planning, towards people and away from the current road-centric approach we have taken.

We saw the mistakes made in my home town of Kilkenny, where the local authority ploughed a road through the heart of the medieval town, despite the objections of thousands of people in Kilkenny. Now, they are all saying in Kilkenny that they want to finish the ring road, which we had campaigned for. I do not want to see other towns making that same mistake we did in Kilkenny, where there are trucks trundling through, past schools, hospitals and residential areas.

If we look back at the time of Barbara's accident, and we think of accidents like that in urban centres, I will not say they were rare but they were very largely confined to the larger urban centres, such as here in Dublin. The trend we have seen in recent years in our smaller towns and villages, however, is one of an increasing one of pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users being killed by cars.We are talking about road safety. We are doing so largely from the perspective of cars, but it is critically important to recognise the need to reconfigure our public spaces. Local authorities need to be at the forefront of that. Local authorities need to be creative. Local authority members need to make brave decisions, and it is very often the case that they do not. They need to make brave decisions about safe routes to school and about the reallocation of public spaces in urban centres, which is hugely important. The reduction in speed limits is to be absolutely welcomed, but there is so much more to be done through good urban planning, incorporating that planning into road safety and ensuring that people-centred road design is at the forefront of what we do.

Thankfully, in Kilkenny we have an access group that is consulted with in regard to road projects. We also have a cycling officer in Kilkenny. Every local authority should have these resources at its disposal for engaging with the public on road safety issues. From the Minister of State's perspective, it is critically important that he look at this during his tenure. He is a cyclist, so it is vital that we look at this from the perspective of vulnerable road users in particular. With the trend over recent years, unfortunately, it is increasingly worrying to see what is happening in many of our smaller towns and villages, not just the large urban centres. Dublin also faces a major challenge as local authorities try to reshape and reallocate road space. Will the Minister of State deliberate on that matter?

I apologise that I cannot stay to hear the Minister of State's closing comments. I thank him and wish him all the very best during his tenure.