Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for letting me in early. I have to go to a meeting in UCD so will have to leave shortly after I ask my questions. I apologise for that. I am very conscious we are all men present with the exception of the Chairman, which is a bit unfortunate. I have very good friends on this committee but sometimes when I am listening to our budget analysis, I think it is all about the economy. We are dominated by economists. I do not want to be too critical of the Minister but he said he will make decisions on the basis of what is right for the economy as a whole. We need to think of what is right for our society as a whole when making decisions. I will cite three examples of strategic cases where it is not just economic interests that are involved. I will be slightly critical of the Minister's Department but I am coming from my own historical experience. Deputy Brian Stanley was due in this morning for a 9.30 a.m. meeting of the communications committee. He arrived an hour late. He left Portlaoise at 7 o'clock and it took him three hours to get in. As a result of a historic obsession in the Minister's Department with automobiles as the favoured mode of transport, the Department's inability to cost the benefits of public transport, the fact there is no understanding of the quality of urban life and the need to create public space and invest in cycling, pedestrian and other infrastructure, we have created a completely unsustainable transport system that is desperately affecting the quality of life for our people as well as the productivity of the economy.

The Chairman said we need to review our property tax and look at what was proposed back in 2010. The Department fought that tooth and nail at the time. We should consider the introduction of a site value tax that at least would signal what we need to do in our national planning framework to go back to the centre and stop the sprawl. Economists do not seem to have the ability to measure that, for example, one's time on a train is worth more because one can read a book, which perhaps does not have a value. I put that forward as one of the measures in which we could get a strategic change which economists might not suggest but which make sense.