Active Travel
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-24
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Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

As I said, I am very supportive of these projects. I said Cork County Council area but it was Cork City Council area that was allocated €27 million this year under the NTA’s active and sustainable transport investment programme. What happens is the NTA will do the allocations. The draft allocations come to us. We have a very good active travel team within the Department but the local authorities are the critical link to make sure proposals they have are prioritised. That design work is really important and the options. It looks to me from what I have read that it is likely it will be the bridge option, but this is a very early stage. I am confident with the allocation we have through the revised NDP that we will be able to continue to deliver these projects at scale, including this one.
Last year approximately 200 kilometres of cycling and walking routes were delivered across the country. Interestingly, in the coming days the NTA will publish last year's 2025 walking and cycling index for Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford. We hope to see positive signs of that continued modal shift arising, in part from the improvements to the active travel network, because people are responding to it. I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. We will keep an eye on it and I am sure he will keep in touch with me. As he said it is important we work with colleagues in the local authority to ensure they get those options and designs done and get them submitted to the NTA so they can be given consideration for funding next year to advance the project. The preliminary design and planning has to go through and then we can move towards funding. We have the funds to deliver these projects.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-24