John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for both their public service and for attending this meeting. I will ramble around a few issues, some of which have been mentioned. I have a number of questions as well.

Missing from Mr. Doyle's statement were phrases such as "the Minister is determined", "the Minister wants", "the Minister is anxious" and "the Minister is ambitious for". There is no mention of the Minister, which might be par for the course as regards contributions. The point I am emphasising relates to the lack of political drive behind some of the things we are doing or need to do, the lack of overall urgency regarding the situation and the need, as mentioned by previous speakers, for a communications strategy.

I made a pretty detailed submission regarding BusConnects so I will not go into that matter now. One of the key questions that came up, which I mentioned in my submission and at public information meetings I held concerns the nature of the NTA. It is a pretty significant matter that needs to be addressed because the public does not know what the NTA is. We can operate in a bubble when it comes to matters such as climate change and assume that many things are happening while the public might be going off in a different direction. Electric vehicles are an example in this regard. We are all talking about electric vehicles but there is very little talk about hybrids. The witnesses have no figures on hybrids. Perhaps they have them and can circulate them to us. The public has made the decision that hybrid or a mixture of hybrid is the way it is going until range anxiety and other issues are resolved. So in a few years' time, we will end up with a situation where people will have hybrids or a mix of hybrid vehicles that they purchased in good faith. The position for them will be similar to those who purchased diesel cars in good faith until the science changed and who are now stuck with them. Something might happen in the budget. There is a need for a sustained national communications strategy. That would be one of the things for which I would be pushing. This needs to start and be continuously featured in people's lives. They know that climate change is here and there is a real appetite for discovering what they can do.

The public's experience of trying to do things by themselves regarding climate change has been mixed. I remember the first kerbside collections in Dublin, namely, the small green boxes the size of milk crates. They were not that big. We discovered after six or seven years of operation that almost all of the material the public had gone to the trouble of segregating ended up in landfill. It was a real case of brushing something under the carpet. The material had not gone to recycling plants at all. There are serious questions to be asked about that. How much of the material people recycle actually ends up being recycled? How much of it ends up in landfill? How much of the organic material we put out in brown bins in Dublin ends up in landfill because people do these things in good faith? When the science said something in 2008, people made a shift to vehicles with diesel engines in good faith. We continue to publish figures such as those in the pictorial graph relating to emissions. I am making the assumption that this is based on us accepting the figures motor manufacturers are giving us but it has been proven that they have been lying through their teeth. On the figures we are discussing in the context of reduced emissions, it was mentioned that 95.6% of vehicles are in AB emission bands. Is that according to vehicle handbooks or is it a scientifically proven fact? If it is based on what the manufacturers are telling us, we cannot trust it at all. These are small things. There is a need for a national communications strategy.

This committee must, in the context of the report it eventually compiles, must produce solid, concrete and tangible actions that the public can implement in their homes. We have heard some fascinating information.

I have not attended all the meetings but I have read the Official Report of proceedings and watched recordings of the committee's discussions on issues such as housing and insulation and on what is being done in other countries. They are the kind of things at which we need to look. The communications issue is the first one. It must be communicated that this needs to be done and that there is an urgency to it and to outline the things people can do in their personal lives.

The second issue relates to the political ambition behind all of this. The Department and the NTA can only do what they are directed to do. I have not heard of any great urgency propelling them forward in the work they do.

I will go through some of the issues raised, including the electric vehicles and the ESB. We should not ultimately leave it exclusively to the ESB. Perhaps in terms of public infrastructure it is important. In the United States, the much-maligned Tesla did a deal with Burger King or Dunkin' Donuts so that charging points are located at a number of their outlets. I think Dundrum town centre has a number of charging points. I what was said about the hope that people might charge their vehicles at home. Let us look at it in terms of the countries that are leading on this. What has their experience been? Do people predominantly charge at home? If that is the case then it is good to follow that. It would be useful to have charging points at hospitals, workplaces, shopping centres and tax offices so people do not have to sit in their cars waiting for them to charge but can actively do something.

The witnesses mentioned that transport accounts for 20% of our emissions. Aviation accounts for 20% of that total and the figure for aviation emissions is increasing. It looks as if the other transport sectors may contract over time, if we are lucky and if we achieve all the targets and introduce electric cars, buses, public transport and, particularly, the infrastructure relating to BusConnects, of which I am a supporter. It should come first. This relates to what Deputy Corcoran Kennedy said about the third runway at Dublin Airport. It looks like aviation, in the Irish context, is just going to grow and grow and there does not seem to be any alternative to aviation fuels. Aviation has not been mentioned specifically but it looks as if it will be a growing factor.