Mr. Hugh Creegan:

The Deputy asked if our public transport fleet was capable of reducing its emissions by 51%. I would break that down a little. The Luas is already electric, so that is fine. The answer in respect of our heavy rail is "Yes"; we are expanding our electrification in Dublin, as the Deputy will be aware. The Cork commuter service will be electrified and has the potential to go further than that, including the use of battery technology, which was mentioned earlier. On the rail side, we are equally comfortable that can be achieved. We will be able to transition the urban bus system to meet those targets over the coming years. The technology for double that fleet is there or thereabouts to do a large proportion of our routes but not all of them. The challenge is the long distance regional routes connecting our cities and our towns. The technology is not available to run it electric at present. We are trialling some hydrogen vehicles, as was mentioned, so there is a question mark over that. That is challenging and the answer to that in not yet fully clear.

On the Deputy’s question as to whether our capital projects are sufficiently carbon-proofed, the answer to that in our area is "Yes". We are building sustainable transport projects, either public transport or active travel projects. All of them are focused on moving people on to more sustainable modes. They are carbon-proofed.

In terms of MetroLink and its sizing, we can only build a tunnel like MetroLink once. A great deal of effort has gone into trying to predict the land usages and the travel patterns into the future along the corridor. We and TII, which is intimately involved in it, are satisfied we have sized it appropriately and that it can cater for development in the longer term. Much work has gone into that. Time will tell if we are right or not but a great deal of work has gone into trying to size it properly.