Professor Brian Caulfield:

I thank Deputy Bruton. He asked a very good question. One of the things we encountered when we were going through this process was the large number of stakeholder reviews, meetings and interviews. The analogy that kept coming back up, especially in Volume 4, was about Covid. The response we as a nation had to the Covid pandemic is the kind of level of response we need for climate action. Regarding how we sell this to everyone, obviously Covid was a clear and present danger. Determining how we can sell this climate action message to the public in a way that can ensure we get everybody working together in this was an aspect that came across clearly. We talked in Volume 4 about changing the social contract around this new vision that we see. It is not all doom and gloom. Volume 4, in particular, looks at the ways in which we can have benefits from this transition happening.

On the point the Deputy made about the vehicles, he is right. Our vehicles spend about 95% of the time idle outside our houses. There is definitely a market and potential here for this circular economy. Research that we conducted in Trinity showed that every shared car that goes into a city, Dublin especially, would get rid of ten other cars. That kind of thinking is very important.

With that in mind, one of the things again addressed in Volume 4 is the just transition around these vehicles. We had a fairly brutal, one-size-fits-all tax break for people to purchase electric vehicles. This resulted in a large degree of inequity, where those in wealthy parts of Ireland ended up with electric vehicles and were able to reap the benefits. This is outside the contents of the volume, but what we see in other countries is that they are starting to focus more on people in rural areas. In Scotland especially, this is being done quite a bit. It is also happening in France. They are looking at ways in which they can incentivise those who cannot afford to purchase electric cars to enable them to do so. The just transition aspect was very important in the car context.

There is then the question of selling it to people and telling them they would be saving about €13,000 annually, which is the figure the AA gives as the cost of owning a vehicle. If we can sell the economic benefits of the just transition to people, particularly concerning transport, because it is my area, including the benefits of going without a car and going towards a shared car, that will also be part of the mix.