An 11-year-old has urged Shane Ross to invest in cycling infrastructure, telling the Minister for Transport this evening that she didn't want to "die cycling on her bike".

Caoimhe Collins was speaking to minister at the launch of an initiative aiming at giving bus drivers an idea of what roads are like for cyclists.

Caoimhe, from Phibsborough, who cycles to and from school every day with her sisters, urged the minister to take more effective measures to ensure safe cycling in Dublin.

“I don’t want to die cycling on my bike. And please can you build proper cycling infrastructure for me and my friends and sisters to cycle on?” she asked the minister.

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Minister Ross said: “What you’ve said is very moving and I’ll certainly take the message back to the RSA and to my department.”

Expand Close Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Shane Ross launched a new Dublin Bus virtual reality driver training initiative. Picture: Maxwells / Facebook

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Whatsapp Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Shane Ross launched a new Dublin Bus virtual reality driver training initiative. Picture: Maxwells

Dad Peter Collins said: "Not very many of Caoimhe's friends cycle to school because their parents don't feel it's safe."

The minister also expressed his sympathies at the deaths of two cyclists over the past week.

“I think it’s absolutely tragic what has been happening in recent times on the roads,” he said.

“I want to express my great regret and great sympathy and condolences to the families of those who died on bikes in recent times.”

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Protesters from cyclist group I Bike Dublin staged a cyclist ‘die in’ at Leinster House yesterday and were protesting outside of the building at the launch today.

“I fully understand what the ‘die in’ protest was saying and I fully sympathise with the sentiments which they express,” said the minister.

“I’ll never be able to allocate enough money to save lives - and no government can ever do that. We’re doing everything we think is possible, effective and necessary to do that.

“On the more general cycling allocations of money, we’re spending huge amounts of money on cycling in the years to come, we’ve increased it enormously, and also on Bus Connects,” he said.

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The new virtual-reality training initiative will give Dublin Bus drivers an idea of what roads are like from a cyclist’s perspective. Around 2,550 drivers will experience busy roads from a cyclist’s point of view via a virtual-reality 360-degree headset.

“We wanted to show the cycling community that we were serious,” said Ray Coyne, CEO of Dublin Bus.

“We’ve commissioned an additional virtual reality headset and what we’re looking to do is do it from a bus driver’s point of view, so we’ll have an Oculus headset of the bus driver of the 360 of the bus driver driving through the city,” he added.

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Online Editors