Beautiful rural Ireland is becoming ever more accessible
The Government’s €360 million capital allocation for Active Travel and Greenways in 2026, published by the Department of Transport on 19 January 2026, is positioned as a major push for walking and cycling infrastructure nationwide. For communities, it is also a placemaking moment: an opportunity to reshape how towns, villages and neighbourhoods feel, function and connect.
Of the total, €290 million is allocated through the National Transport Authority’s Active and Sustainable Transport Investment Programme to progress walking and cycling projects delivered by local authorities, with Government indicating almost 1,000 projects of varying scale moving forward in 2026. A further €8 million is available for behaviour change and training programmes, including CycleRight in primary schools and workplace and campus travel initiatives. The remaining €62 million is allocated to Greenway projects and related active travel infrastructure on national roads, supporting progress on the National Cycle Network.
Why this matters for placemaking is simple. Active travel infrastructure is not just “routes”; it changes the public realm. It can turn a stressful school frontage into a safer, calmer civic space. It can stitch together parks, playgrounds, sports clubs, main streets and public transport stops so that everyday life is less car-dependent and more locally connected. It can also revive overlooked edges of towns by making them reachable, legible and pleasant to spend time in, not just pass through. The Department of Transport expects around 200km of walking and cycling infrastructure to be delivered in 2026, aligned with Climate Action Plan targets on reducing transport emissions.
The announcement gives a sense of that breadth, referencing schemes that range from major urban and suburban links (such as the Broadmeadow Estuary Greenway in Dublin), to city route improvements and safer connections (including projects cited for Cork, Limerick and Waterford), to destination and rural routes (including the South Kerry Greenway and the Ulster Canal Greenway extension in Monaghan).
Local authority allocations also underline that this is a national programme, not a small number of showcase projects. The published breakdown includes, for example, Dublin City (€35.95m), Cork City (€27.05m), Fingal (€24.0m), Cork County (€19.875m), South Dublin (€19.25m) and Limerick City and County (€19.355m), alongside allocations for every county.
Design quality and community input will determine whether this funding produces transformational places or disconnected fragments. A continuous, comfortable network is what changes behaviour; isolated sections often do not. That is why public consultation is not a box-ticking exercise here. The most valuable local feedback is specific and practical: where footpaths disappear, where crossings fail, where speeds are too high, where junctions feel unsafe, where access is poor for wheelchair users or buggies, where lighting and sightlines create risk, and where routes need to connect to the places people actually travel to every day.
Place Engage can support local authorities, communities and project teams to do this well, using a hybrid approach that combines in-person engagement with clear, accessible digital participation. That includes designing consultation that reaches beyond the “usual suspects”, translating technical drawings into understandable choices, gathering place-based evidence (including local knowledge of safety risks and movement patterns), and creating transparent feedback loops so people can see how submissions influenced outcomes.
If your area is progressing an active travel route or greenway in 2026, the key placemaking question to bring to any consultation is straightforward: will this make everyday journeys feel safe, dignified and easy for children, older people and more vulnerable road users, while improving the quality of the public realm for everyone else as well.
Place Engage is a dynamic public consultation tool for fully-immersive, digital placemaking and meaningful stakeholder engagement. As a recognised friend of the New European Bauhaus movement, the Place Engage team are founding members of the Public Consultation Institute of Ireland and are currently contributing to an international, multidisciplinary body of work aimed at establishing best practice in integrated on and offline public consultation for both the private and public sectors in Europe: https://placeengage.com/