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

I will finish on this point. I would like to give reassurance, if I can. Obviously, safety comes first. The first priority in the roads budget must be maintenance. We must make sure our existing roads are safe. I believe that can be done while at the same time allocating two thirds of the budget to public transport - to rail and bus services. That is in line with the national planning framework, which was very good and very clear. It made it clear that we needed to bring life back into the centres of our towns and villages, to decarbonise and to pursue a completely different planning and development model, which would come with providing public transport. Unfortunately, the national development plan abandoned that and maintained the existing system of roads-based development. The best example I can think of is in the Chairman's constituency. I am aghast when I look at the development plans for Galway because they are out of date, old-fashioned and not properly sustainable. Galway is going to develop out to the motorway that has been planned. I would prefer to spend €600 million or €700 million on the western rail corridor than on such a motorway. This would ensure the 30,000 people who drive into Galway from distant locations every day are not stuck in roundabouts outside industrial estates. I think that would make for a city that works. If we keep going with the sprawling road-based development model, it will cripple our economy. It affects people's quality of life to have to spend so much of their time in cars rather than with their families and friends.

I want to reiterate that this is not anti-rural. I will cite my own example in support of that. My main job for 15 years of my working life involved getting people to Mayo and Kerry from Shannon and Dublin airports. Every time a tourist from Germany or elsewhere rang me to say he would be arriving in Shannon Airport at midday and wanted to know how he could get to Mayo or Kerry that day, I was mortified to have to say it could not be done in the same day. That was my lived experience. It was the same experience all over the country. We do not have a proper rural public transport system. I agree with Senator Lombard that we need to think about this creatively. The switch we need to make in transport does not just involve a move from petrol cars to electric cars - it also involves all sorts of clever and sophisticated car-sharing models which, first and foremost, should benefit rural Ireland. We should be looking at the other services that school buses can provide in local communities after the school run has finished for the day. We should make sure every post van that delivers to a rural community has seats in it so that it can turn into a bus. We can be creative and innovative in this area. The first priority should be rural Ireland because people in rural Ireland are suffering worst from the deficiencies in our public transport system. We will not be able to do that unless we spend money on public transport. If we keep going with a roads-based system, as the existing national development plan does, we will not deliver on the objective of the national planning framework to deliver public transport. All our people in rural and urban areas are being crippled by being stuck in our cars all the time. If we make a switch, we will have a better quality of life.