The bicycle played a rich role in Ireland's past. Now it is key to our future

The Guardian

7 days ago

The front pages in Ireland were splashed with yellow last week after Ben Healy became the first Irish cyclist in 38 years to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. While those who cycle sometimes make a point of separating its two forms – sport and transport – they are deeply interlinked, and bumpy streets on the island of Ireland have played a part in that.
In 1888, John Boyd Dunlop developed the pneumatic tyre to help his son cycle around Belfast more comfortably. The technology was first used for racing bicycles and then manufactured in a factory in central Dublin before it was brought into widespread use.
The combination of the pneumatic tyre and the safety bicycle led to a boom in cycling. This new model was the iPhone of bicycles at the time, replacing earlier bikes including the penny farthing with its impractically large front wheel.
Having played a crucial role in everything from grocery deliveries to the 1916 Easter Rising that put Ireland on the path to independence, bicycles have left their mark on Irish history. One of their most significant impacts has been an increase in social connectivity and less rural isolation.
At its Museum of Country Life in County Mayo, the National Museum of Ireland features an exhibition on cycling and its transformative effect on Irish life, outlining how, by the 1930s, 'bicycles became the key mode of transport in every parish in Ireland, dramatically changing the social life of ordinary people'.
A number of first-hand accounts are on display, including memories of cycling tens of miles to dance halls. Peggy McLoughlin recalled: 'When the dance was over, we headed on our homeward journey on our less-than-roadworthy bicycles. Only a few of us possessed lights, the girls with flash lamps positioned themselves four abreast on the road in front, with the dark unlit beings cycling half hidden in between. At the back, you'd have your fingers crossed that you wouldn't encounter any Garda.'
The long distances people cycled on country roads 70 years ago put today's cycling debates in perspective. Many claim that bicycles are not practical because of distance, even when the journeys made by car within most towns and cities are much shorter than those that many of our parents or grandparents cycled.
But times changed. The Celtic Tiger years brought a different boom: car ownership and usage. By the time of the financial crash in 2008, the number of cars on Irish roads had doubled in 16 years. The impact on cycling was stark. The number of secondary-school students travelling to school daily by bicycle declined from a peak of 50,648 in 1986 to 6,592 in 2011, a fall of 87%.
In the late 1980s, more than 19,000 teenage girls cycled to school. That figure had fallen to only 529 in 2011. By the time the tiger was truly dead, five times as many secondary-school girls drove themselves to school than cycled. SUVs, the high bonnets of which are a deadly threat to children, have become more common than bicycles at school.
But there has been a resurgence in cycling. When I started transporting my youngest child in a cargo bike in Dublin more than a decade ago, it would always turn heads. Now, cargo bikes – which can be seen as a type of indicator species – are not just a common sight in most of Dublin but are regularly spotted in Cork, Limerick and Galway too.
On-street bike sharing, which improved public access and awareness of cycling in Dublin, has now spread to towns such as Athlone, Bray, Carlow, Castlebar, Kilkenny, Mullingar, Portlaoise, Sligo, Tullamore, Westport, Wexford and Wicklow.
Before Covid, cycling was already on a gradual rise in the capital, a trend that was boosted by quick-build cycle routes and the protection of some existing cycle lanes with plastic bollards, which received a mixed reception.
After this, the latest census in early 2022 showed that despite a significant increase in working from home, all Irish cities recorded a rise in commuting by bike. In Dublin and its suburbs, the proportion of commuters who cycle to work or education is now 8.3%.
It has clearly helped that the last government – a centrist coalition that included the Green party – pumped €360m a year into walking and cycling infrastructure between 2020 and this year. The scale of this funding can be seen in context when compared with the UK, where the government allocated £300m for active travel in England in 2025 – spending less money in a country with a far higher population (57 million versus Ireland's 5 million).
But inflation means that €360m doesn't go as far as it would have done in 2020. And there were other potholes along the way, including the challenge of ramping up projects and the teams to run them around the country, and what campaigners called out as questionable metrics for success.
Five years on, a number of local authorities are starting to make substantial progress on joining cycle routes together into useful networks. And despite the baseless claims made by online commenters and sometimes by politicians that cycle lanes are empty or underused, there are promising signs that more people are cycling in areas where significant improvements have been made.
However, the Greens lost all but one of their seats in last year's general election. With mostly rural independent members of parliament replacing them in the governing coalition, will the momentum now be lost? Will funding already spent on planning projects be wasted?
Attitudes to cycling are not as polarised in Ireland as in the UK or elsewhere, but opposition to changes on streets and roads, including bus priority and pedestrianisation, is loud. Dealing with objections is a huge part of the job that councils have.
There's a greater culture shock and backlash in some smaller towns, where little has changed in decades. Exaggerated claims about the alleged destruction of the fabric of towns and cities are routine.
A recent examination of entry points into Dublin city centre found that just 6% of them gained notable cycling improvements in the past decade. People who cycle – and those who try it before giving up – often complain about cycle lanes that are too narrow and disconnected.
Faster delivery and more focus are needed in many areas to join up routes. Ben Healy won't be in the top spot when the Tour finishes on the Champs-Élysées on Sunday, but he has lit up the greatest bike race in the world with his energy and enthusiasm; something we would do well to carry over into everyday Irish cycling, to make it a truly mass-participation activity again. To borrow an old Irish election slogan: a lot done, more to do.
Cian Ginty is editor of IrishCycle.com