Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Independent Group for tabling this motion. How we deal with the central issues of transport, climate change and future planning for our society is important for Galway and every region and city in the country. This morning, I listened to an interview with an economist about planning our economy. He was critical of the approach taken by the Government on all levels. One example he used was the lack of planning related to climate change. The obvious point was that it is inevitable. It will happen and will hit us in the form of serious flooding. We all know there are clear signs that sea levels and the levels of rivers, lakes and so on are rising. Rural Ireland will be severely hit without any planning to prevent or deal with the drainage and flooding issues, which need urgent planning. The economist said that when he talks to senior Government officials about these issues, their attitude is that they will look after it when it happens. They said they did not know Covid was going to happen and that they looked after it. They turn a blind eye to the need for forward planning. This motion creates a realisation of that need.

The importance of reopening the western rail corridor cannot be overstated.

Anyone who is into hiking or walking around the country, as I am, realises there are so many disused railway tracks around this country. They should never have been closed in the first place but as they have been, there should be a long-term attempt to reopen them and have positive effects on the greater region, especially in the west, to expand the vision of what our railway network could look like. I do not mean what it could look like in 100 years' time, because we do not have that much time, but what it could look like in the next five or ten years. We have to think big for climate and for our future and see the western rail corridor extending beyond Sligo to Letterkenny and on to Derry. For all the talk we have about a united Ireland, an attempt at providing the infrastructure on the ground that could join the two jurisdictions in a real way for people via frequent rail services accessing all parts of the nation would be a very concrete, pardon the pun, way of demonstrating what a united Ireland could look like for ordinary people.

If I lived in Galway and faced constant traffic jams, I can I imagine I might end up supporting the demand for a ring road, but we must learn lessons of roadbuilding both here and globally. I have just finished reading an excellent book entitled Road to Nowhereby a young man called Paris Marx. He is from Canada and summarises the experience in North America throughout the last century of dependence on the private car. We are aware of the huge impacts total dependence on cars for mobility have on climate and CO₂emissions but less well-documented are the effects on the communities and the lives of people . The endless demands for more and better roads do not provide a solution for the problems people face. Time and again we have been shown roads simply lead to more cars and thus more demands for wider and better roads. This applies as much to Galway as it does to the history of North America. Cities are littered with examples.

A better use of the funds for the ring road would be the provision of a light rail system. It would be a much better and more attractive option to people. As has been proven around Dublin, it would be even more attractive than the bus services. Access to park-and-ride facilities is important within that. Although we focus on the standard rail service, a light rail service would have a far quicker and bigger impact on a city like Galway. We should enhance the bus services, but do so in a way that works and not in a way, as the previous Deputy said, that BusConnects has done in this city. A total bags has been made of the proposal to extend the service and it has been made worse for ordinary people trying to socialise, or get to work, college, or hospital appointments. Galway is an immensely congested town and needs a new deal. Like many towns it needs proper public transport and specifically it needs services that will link the population of the west of the city, such as Knocknacarra, Barna and Salthill, to the industrial hubs to the east around Parkmore and Ballybrit.

The blocking of the proposed cycle infrastructure was not a good idea and was very regrettable. The issues facing Galway are replicated in every town and city across the country, and the solutions are the same. We cannot lecture people about the importance of changing their personal habits when in most cases people do not have options for getting to work, college, hospital or out to socialise.

Our dependence on the car is not an accident. It has been carefully engineered by massive interests in car manufacturing and the fossil fuel industry. Car dependence has shaped our cities and urban environment, largely to the detriment of local environments and communities. It has hollowed out town centres and placed shopping centres in suburban areas that are built to accommodate more cars and indeed more people. We know the cost of reshaping our world for the private car in terms of climate change, air quality and the lives lost and injured as a result of accidents on the roads. We have no choice but to rethink those mistakes and look beyond the car as a solution to public transport issues.

The solution cannot be electric cars. They are a wholly unsustainable answer pushed by the Minister for Transport and this Government in a harebrained scheme to replace 1 million private cars with 1 million EVs. I am glad that plan has been dropped but we must reshape public transport in a radical and revolutionary way. Public transport must massively expand and we must adopt the idea of free public transport. This has already been done in over 100 cities and regions globally and there has been a major impact not just on the mobility of people through those regions and cars being taken off the road but also in improving quality of life, air quality etc. The impact on this country would be immense and make climate action seem more real and positive for many people. However, it cannot be on the basis of the sort of half thought-out unrealistic planning that has been carried through by the NTA. I am very critical of the authority. It has let us all down badly. It has gone ahead with plans, especially around Dublin and the BusConnects programme, in a way that has sometimes left people totally stranded but also wholly bewildered about what is happening with this State and our transport system. Let us not do that to Galway. Let us take the motion put forward by Deputy Connolly and her group as a template for how we should be dealing with the problems of traffic congestion, road use, climate, the environment and the mobility of people throughout our cities and towns. Such a template could be used elsewhere as well.

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