Strategic planning relies on the ‘reasonable’ and the ‘achievable.’ A fundamental tenet of any modal shift strategy is that it must be zero-sum: for one mode of transport to increase, another must decrease. In its 2023-2029 County Development Plan (CDP), Kildare County Council (KCC) abandoned this logic. By setting targets that totalled 115% and 130%, the Council planned for the impossible.

Mode of Travel To Work	Baseline	Target		Mode of Travel To Education	Baseline	Target
Walking	6%	10%		Walk	28%	50%
Cycling	1%	20%		Cycling	2%	15%
Bus	5%	13%		Public Transport	20%	25%
Train	5%	14%		Car	50%	40%
Car Share	4%	8%		TOTAL	100%	130%
Car	74%	50%
TOTAL	95%	115%

Figure 1 Mode of Travel to Work Figure 2 Mode of Travel to Education

In the draft CDP, while the baseline figures appeared in a single table, the targets were spread across different pages so the totals of 115% and 130% for travel to work and to education were not immediately obvious.

When looking at a document such as a CPD, the first thing that cycling advocates would look for are future targets for cycling and car use in order to see the level of ambition of a council.  As the document was at the public consultation stage, Maynooth Cycling Campaign made a submission in May 2022 pointing out the error. To our surprise, when the final version of the CDP was published, there was no change to the targets. Maynooth Cycling Campaign assumed that this was merely an oversight on the part of the Council and contacted the Council a second time. In a response to our second correspondence, the Council again dismissed our submission with vague aspirations of 

“…. aiming for as high as possible for the sustainable modes and less high for the unsustainable ones”.

Unfortunately, their targets were both unreasonable and unachievable.

As a member of the Kildare Sustainable Transport Forum, Maynooth Cycling Campaign attempted to raise the issue again within the forum but the proposal to include a review of the  climate targets in the forum’s work programme was rejected. Some months later, with the election of a new council in 2024, the Forum was abolished and to date the new Chair has failed to re-established it so this avenue of approach was closed off.

In October 2025, Maynooth Cycling Campaign approached Cllr. Peter Melrose to raise the issue of transport targets by way of a council question. In their response, the officials finally accepted that an error had been made but they put the blame squarely on councillors. Before a special meeting of the council to finalise the draft CDP, a number of councillors had wanted higher targets for active travel. One of them, Cllr. Bill Clear submitted a number of motions which were accepted for consideration. These motions were voted on by councillors and approved, albeit with a number of amendments but in the heat of the discussions no one realised the implications for the “bigger picture”. 

The response by officials also omitted to mention that Maynooth Cycling Campaign had made two submissions. Furthermore, in advance of the critical meeting, officials had considered the various motions but had failed to realise the consequences on the overall targets. Irish politicians may be slow to accept blame for mistakes but they are multiple times faster than officials. The Council has now announced a review of the CDP starting in August 2026  and proposes to correct the targets at that point – some three and a half years into the CDP’s time span of six years. The minimum that we should expect is that the Council gives due diligence to assessing submissions from the public. From our point of view, it has singularly failed to do this.