Muiris O'Cearbhaill reports from Strasbourg

FINE GAEL MEP Regina Doherty has doubled down on her remarks over cycle lanes in Dublin and said that while she agrees the wording of her initial argument was clumsy, she still holds the view that bike infrastructure is “authoritarian”.

During her European election campaign, the former Minister told the Irish Daily Mail that she believes the Green Party have turned Dublin “into a spaghetti junction of cycle lanes that have divided the city like East and West Berlin”.

The comments were denounced by the Green Party, including its former leader Eamon Ryan.

In an interview with The Journal in Strasbourg yesterday, where she was taking up her seat in the European Parliament for the first time, Doherty said:

“I will admit, what I said might’ve been clumsily put. But the premise of what I said – I still absolutely firmly believe in.”

She did not accept the criticism of her initial wording, suggesting that she could not relate to people who must travel in Dublin city centre as she is from the suburbs of Dublin. She said she is “totally empathic to cyclists”.

She said: “I have four kids and a husband. Two of them are cyclists. They’re those people who put Lycra on a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning and go off for four hours. I’ve been living with cyclists all my married life and my life as a parent.”

“The problem I have is is that the authoritarian way we’ve been imposing cycle lanes on some communities has totally divided communities – and Dún Laoghaire is the one I pointed to. That’s not something that would’ve been privy to me,” she added.

An influx of bike lanes are a direct result of the Green Party in Government and, according to reports, have resulted in nearly 700,000 cars being taken off the road around the country.

In towns and cities in Ireland, the NTA has found that more than half of Irish adults walk five or more days a week, while at least 15% cycle once a week. Around one in two residents want to walk or wheel more, and about a third would like to cycle more.

But the newly-elected Dublin MEP pointed to in Ashbourne in Co Meath as an example of where millions of Euro has been spent on building cycle paths which have yet to be completed or are “consistently parked in”.

“We’re in such a hurry to tell everyone they have to be on their bicycles that what we’ve done is imposed cycling infrastructure that, in some cases, is dangerous – and Lusk to Balbriggan is an example of that – and in other cases has divided communities as opposed to bringing people with us.” 

The former minister said that she agreed the Government and her colleagues in Brussels needed to work towards changing the attitudes to cycling rather than promoting driving, but that she felt the roll out of cycle lanes has lost the room.

She added that her interview during her European campaign “wasn’t meant to say cyclists are bad, drivers are good – because we all need to change”.

‘Bad for Ireland’

This week, the new European Parliament will vote in favour or against Ursula Von der Leyen to serve a second term as President of the European Commission.

A high-level deal  has been agreed between the three major European political groupings: Fianna Fáil’s centrist Renew; Fine Gael’s centre-right EPP; and Labour’s left-wing Socialist & Democrats (S&D).

These groups help the Parliament to have a structured whip system but also allow them to secure positions on committees, among other things. This high-level deal will see many MEPs within these groups voting in favour of the German politician’s second term.

However, the margins are already very slim. Labour’s Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, a member of S&D, already ruled out voting for Von der Leyen and yesterday, Fianna Fáil MEPs also announced they were not going to vote for her either.

If just 10% of MEPs in the three coalition groups go rogue during the secret ballot, Von der Leyen will not be successful in securing a second term and EU leaders will have to wait a month until it can propose another person to take up the role.

Doherty said she could not understand why Fianna Fáil’s MEPs would vote against their party leader, Tánaiste Micheál Martin, their European group, Renew, and put their party’s proposed commissioner Michael McGrath at risk not getting his desired portfolio.

Kelleher yesterday told The Journal that he does not believe Von der Leyen would purposefully be vindictive when handing out portfolios and that he would not be voting for her as he disagreed with her actions after the 7 October attacks in Israel.

Doherty said that she believed Kelleher’s position was “very naive” and that there decision could be “bad for Ireland”, not just the Fianna Fáil party.

She added: “Billy has been around in politics as long as I have – he’s the same age as me.

“But he knows full-well, what the import of his decision is going to be – and that’s why I think it’s odd.”

Von der Leyen came under fire for a trip she took to Israel after the terror attacks in the south west of the country and told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the EU would show “unconditional” solidarity with Israel.

Since then, Von der Leyen has softened her stance on the situation in Gaza, but has yet to denounce the Israeli response to the attack – which is still ongoing and has resulted in the deaths of nearly 40,000 people.

Doherty however said she believed Kelleher’s criticisms are “arrogant”. She said she believes it’s best to “you use your influence, inside the tent is the best place to have it”.

The Dublin MEP defended the Commission President but acknowledged that she has yet to be openly critical of Israel’s response to the 7 October attacks. She suggested that maybe the Von der Leyen did not have the same ability to free in her speech.

Put to Doherty that Von Der Leyen did use her freedom of speech to align the EU in solidarity with Israel in the first place, she said: “There should be [support for Israel to defend themselves]. By exactly the same token that there should be unconditional support for Ukraine to defend themselves.

“The problem that we [Ireland] have, is that we think Israel has gone beyond defending themselves. I think, to be fair, any reasonable person would admit that Israel has gone beyond defending themselves.”

She added that she believes: “Where you use your influence is inside the tent – not admonishing people from outside the tent.”

Committees

The Dublin MEP this week was informed that she will have a permanent seat on the internal market committee and the economic affairs committee and a substitute seat on the employment committee. 

Doherty said she sought permanent seats on the two committees as she believed Ireland’s tax input was important to have present as we offer a “unique disposition on certain taxes”.

She added that she also wants to broaden the access businessowners have to the EU single market, so that people from Castleknock to Cahersiveen have access to the 450 million potential customers in the EU.

Yesterday, after she was elected as President of the Parliament, Roberta Metsola said that housing needed to be at top of the MEPs’ agenda.

Doherty said that while she doesn’t think there should be a housing commissioner of-sorts as of now, it would be worth to hear other countries’ methods to housing.

“There’s a space for us to learn what other countries do well. There’s things other countries do well, things we do well – I know we think we do nothing well but you know what I mean,” she said.

Doherty said that models, such as the inner-city, apartment, inter-generalational sharing of space in Austria seem “perfect”.

Bue she added “when you transpose that to Ireland – where we all want the three-bedroom semi-detached, a front garden, a back garden, four parking spaces – the cultures are just different.”

Doherty suggested that Ireland would benefit from learning new methods for land procurement from other countries and modifying the current system to work similarly to how other jurisdictions carry it out.