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

All three presentations were hugely interesting and important. It is slightly difficult because they relate to three very different areas. Each of them in their own right deserve detailed attention.

I will begin with Professor Morgenroth because he spoke about a subject close to my heart. It is interesting that today the Government has published its public consultation on the long-term strategy on greenhouse gas emissions to influence our national energy climate action plan, which has to be agreed in four weeks' time. This document will determine our economic future because, under European governance rules, it will determine what we do in the next 30 or 50 years. There are 15 lines of content on transport and four questions within it. One of them asks what should transport in cities and rural areas look like in 2050. Listening to Professor Morgenroth, I was thinking of a making a submission that by 2050 we would have a scheme whereby we would all have self-driving cars so we could sleep in them on our commute because we will be spending so long commuting backwards and forwards. We could have our children in our cars all of the time as they come and go from school for hours every day as we could see them via Facebook live in our cars. That is where we are going. I agree 100% with what Professor Morgenroth said about the abandonment of the national planning framework and the national development plan. Does he think it makes transport sense to spend however many hundreds of millions of euro widening the M11 between Ashford and Bray, for example? What does that achieve? Would that be one of the roads projects that might be scaled back? Is it just serving the additional 100,000 long-distance commuters who will be stuck in their pyjamas in their cars in 2050? I will throw out another example. We are spending €250,000 widening the road between Westport and Castlebar. How does this fit with the national planning framework? These are two examples and I could pick many more.