Would the real Minister for Transport please stand up, asks Kilian Doyle
THERE IS A cruel joke afoot in Dáil Éireann. A prominent Minister is secretly engaged in a game of pulling the woolly jumper over the eyes of two of his Cabinet colleagues through the use of a body double.
Granted, the victims of his duplicity are a bit Green around the gills. Perhaps it’s the lack of oxygen up on the moral high ground that has their minds enfeebled.
Noel II is the double’s codename. The resemblance to his puppet-master Noel Dempsey is uncanny. His sole purpose is to placate Green ministers by spouting eco-platitudes whenever they’re in earshot. Meanwhile, Noel I and his cronies skulk in the wings, basking in the green kudos of association.
Noel II does his job well. Minister for bicycle clips Eamon Ryan looked a man exceedingly well-placated at the launch last week of Smarter Travel, the Government’s latest aspirational missive.
The Minister for Transport, gushed Ryan, is a man who “walks the walk”. Not for him the hollow promises of his predecessors. Oh no. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a bitter, twisted cynic. Noel II nodded humbly. Noel I had a cackle out the back.
I’m the first to admit few cynics are as bitter or twisted as I. But I deigned to briefly scan the document, just in case it wasn’t a rebranded, regurgitated pile of pious tosh as I suspected.
“If we continue with present policies . . . ” warns the introduction. What’s this? An admission of failure and a commitment to a new approach? Sounds promising. But my hopes soon lay crushed like a bicycle helmet under the wheels of a ministerial Mercedes.
For example, it promises measures to encourage motorists to seek alternative transport. Laudable stuff, but they’ve been banging that drum for years. Park-and-ride to be prioritised? Heard that before. Integrated ticketing? Sounds awfully familiar. More cycle lanes? Ditto.
To be fair, I’m sure there’s more, but I’d lost the will to live once it started prattling on about shiny happy people whizzing about in electric cars.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for getting people out of cars and on to buses or bikes. And I also like Ryan. As we all know, he’s a man who cycles the cycle.
So I’m sad he’s been duped by Noel II. I fear he may have been seduced by the lofty pledge to have 150,000 people pedalling to work by 2020. There is, however, one small potential spanner in the works of this dream – the assumption that there will still be 150,000 people with jobs by then.
Still, that’s hardly Ryan’s concern. He has the bigger picture to consider. I’m sure the people queuing outside dole offices in the crisp, pollution-free air will appreciate that and be only too delighted to reciprocate Ryan’s cheery wave with hand gestures of their own as he pedals past them on carless boulevards a decade hence.
One wonders if, when first perusing this transport plan, Ryan missed the bit where it said no budget had been allocated for any of it. Perhaps that page in Ryan’s copy had been sneakily swopped by Noel II for an artist’s impression of Dublin in 2020 so filled with bicycles it looks like Beijing 30 years ago.
As for the page listing all the specifics of when and how these policies would be implemented, I couldn’t find it anywhere. Maybe Noel II nicked that too.
By the way, Noel II used the launch for a good lash at Dublin Bus over “bunching buses” and “difficult to understand” timetables. Or was it Noel I? Even I’m confused now.
Pray tell, Minister, what’s so difficult about understanding a timetable? One reads it, sniggers in disbelief at it and waits half an hour until four buses come at once. Everyone understands that. Where’s the problem?